“Oh, he won’t mind that.—Will you, Darrell?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Dick in a frank, outspoken way, giving the sergeant a good, earnest, straightforward look as he spoke. “I expect I shall find it very rough, and mind it a good deal at first; but I suppose I shall soon get used to it if I try.”
The sergeant’s grim visage relaxed as Dick spoke.
“I think you’ll do, sir,” he said. “That’s half the fight—try.”
“Do? Oh, yes, he’ll do. Captain Hulton says you are to take him in hand.”
“Proud to do my best, sir,” said the sergeant bluffly. “Mr Darrell knows, of course, that he has a deal more to learn here than he had in the foot brigade, for we have to be wonderfully smart.”
“Oh, yes, he knows all that, Stubbs.”
“Then it sha’n’t be my fault, sir, if I don’t make you as smart an officer as Mr Wyatt here, if he’ll pardon me for saying so.”
“That’s right, Sergeant.—He broke me in, Darrell, and you’ll find him a splendid teacher. Ah, here we are! Now you’re going to see some of the sergeant’s pupils.”
Dick walked with his companion into the barrack-room, where some forty or fifty men were lounging about in the easiest of costumes—négligé would be too smart a term for it; but all started to their feet as the officers entered, and looked sharply and searchingly at the new subaltern. But, as it happened, the lad did not feel the slightest nervous shrinking; for, as he went through the barrack-room, followed by the sergeant, the deep feeling of interest he felt in the aspect of the place, with the men’s trappings and weapons in place and in the most perfect order, the neatness of all but the men’s costume—and, above all, the aspect of the fine body of picked soldiers whom he was some day to lead—thrilled the young officer with a feeling of pride, and gave such a look of animation to his countenance that unwittingly he made as good an impression as the most exacting of friends could have wished.