“I was thinking. Your knocks have made you quite off your head.”
“That they haven’t. I’m as clear over everything as you are.”
“Oh no,” said the orderly. “You’re quite off your chump, and don’t know what you’re saying.”
“You’re a fool,” said the corporal angrily.
“Tell me something I don’t know, old chap. Fool? Why, of course I was, to ’list and come out for a holiday like this. Oh yes, plenty of us feels what fools we’ve been; but we’re making the best of it—like men. D’yer hear—like men? I say, the captain’s regularly raving, ain’t he?”
“Well, er—yes—no.”
“Oh, he is; and you’d better own up and be cracked too. You don’t know what you’ve been saying about Mr Lennox.”
The corporal hesitated, looking up in the orderly’s eyes curiously, and seeming as if he was thinking deeply of the man’s words and debating in himself about the position he was going to occupy if an inquiry did follow the captain’s charges. He was not long in deciding, but he forgot to whine as he said, “Off my head? Delirious? Not a bit. I saw all the captain said, and I’m as clear as you are. I shall stick to it. There’s nothing like the truth.”
“Oh yes, there is,” said the orderly, chuckling; “a thoroughly good thumping lie’s wonderfully like it sometimes—so much like it that it puzzles people to tell t’other from which.”
“Look here, orderly; do you mean to tell me I’m a liar?” said the corporal angrily.