“What nonsense, my dear lad! I’m not the commandant. Ask the major.”
“No, sir,” said Tom Long. “You are not the commandant by name, but from the major downwards you do just as you like with us. Hang me if I’d have drunk such filthy stuff as you gave me, by the major’s orders. I’d sooner have lost my commission.”
“Ha, ha, ha!—Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the doctor. “That’s very good, Long, very good indeed. I suppose I do get the better of all of you in turn. Ha, ha, ha! But look here, my dear boy, I don’t think you are well enough yet.”
“Do let me go, doctor,” pleaded Tom. “There, I don’t want to fight, but let me go with you and help you. This dreadful do-nothing sort of life seems to make me worse.”
“Idleness is bad for any man,” said the doctor.
Tom Long felt flattered at being called a man, but still looked pleadingly at the doctor.
“I could take care of your instruments, sir, and hand you what you wanted if there were any of our fellows hurt.”
“Humph! yes, you could do that,” said the doctor. “But look here,” he said, gazing searchingly into the youth’s face; “did you take your medicine to-day?”
“Yes, sir, three times,” cried Tom, eagerly; for, after neglecting it for two days previously, he had taken it that day by way of a salve to his conscience.
“Then you shall go,” said the doctor. “Be quick. Get your great-coat—and mind, you are to be my assistant.”