“I was going to say, ‘Mean it?’” he said, “but I see you do. Why, Dick, lad, I often wish I was a boy again, as often perhaps as I used to wish that I was a man, and longed for a moustache.”
He gave Dick a comical look and laughed.
“It’s all right,” he said; “it’s coming up, and I don’t say it will beat mine some day, for I’ve got about the biggest in the artillery, and a great nuisance it is when I’m eating soup.—Ah, here’s some one for you to know.”
For a fine, stalwart-looking, slightly-grizzled, deeply-bronzed man in the undress uniform of a sergeant-major suddenly came out from a doorway, and saluted both as he drew himself up like a statue.
“Ah, Sergeant,” said Wyatt, stopping short. “This is my friend, Mr Darrell, our new subaltern.”
“Glad to meet you, sir,” said the old non-commissioned officer stiffly.
“I’m taking him round. We’re just going to look at the men.”
“Yes, sir. Like me to show you round?”
“Yes, you may as well. By the way, Mr Darrell is very anxious to get into our ways as soon as he can. You’ll help him all you can?”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant grimly, and Dick found it hard work to look natural; “but I’m afraid he’ll find us a little rougher than they are in the foot.”