“Then why not try and leave the service, Fred? I’ll save all I can to try and buy you out, but you must help me.”
“Bah! Stuff, little one! What’s the good? Suppose I get my discharge. That’s the good? What can I do? I shall only take to the drink again. I’m not fit for anything but a common soldier. No; I must stop as I am. The poor old governor meant well, Clairy, but it was beggarly work—flunkey work, and it disgusted me.”
“Oh, Fred!”
“Well, it did, little one. I was sick of the fashionable starvation, and I suppose I was too fond of the drink, and so I enlisted.”
“But you don’t drink much now, Fred.”
“Don’t get the chance, little one,” he said, with a bluff laugh. “There, I’ll keep away. I won’t disgrace you all.”
“Dear Fred,” said Claire, crying softly.
“And I won’t talk bitterly to you, my pet. I say, didn’t I see the Major come in at the front?”
“Yes, dear. He went up to see Lady Teigne. She is at home this afternoon.”
“Oh, that’s right. Didn’t come to see you. Master comes in at the front to see the countess; Private James Bell comes in at the back to see you, eh?”