“Yes. Are you sorry?”
“Sorry? No. I shall be delighted. It will be such a change.”
“Yes,” said Wyatt dryly, “it will be a change; so make the most of your comfortable quarters while you can. Next week you may be sleeping on a heap of stones after a supper of nothing to eat and a pannikin of dirty water.”
Chapter XIII.
Hanson Plays the Fool.
But the weeks rolled by without change, save that Dick felt himself quite at home in the troop, and was able to hold his own with the rest.
He had more than once asked Wyatt if there was any fresh news, invariably to receive a shake of the head and the reply:
“One never knows.”
Sergeant Stubbs had reported his pupil as having passed well through the riding-school routine; and this was the principal thing he had to master, for he had come out from college a trained soldier, and his year in a company of foot artillery had prepared him well for his new appointment.
“I shall be glad when we get away from this constant drilling,” said Dick one morning, with a yawn. “I don’t think I want to fight, but I should like for us to be going to some of the big cities, so that one could see the rajahs with their grand show and jewellery. I’ve been out here in India all this time, and seen so little. I say, Wyatt, that was all nonsense about our being ordered up-country.”