Chapter Eighteen.
Dick finds a Pupil.
“No one would know me now,” said the recruit to himself one morning as he glanced at his face in a piece of looking-glass, for the military barber had been operating upon his head, and had—as the Punch man said in the hot weather in allusion to his hair—“cut it to the bone.”
For the first time Richard Frayne dressed in his tightly-fitting, stiff uniform.
“Hallo, Flutey!” said one of the men; “I was looking for you. Got ’em on, then?”
“Yes,” said Dick, smiling. “Do they fit?”
“Oh, yes, pretty tidy. Feel all right?”
“No; I don’t think I can get my hand up level with my mouth, and the tunic feels as if it would split up the back, and the buttons go flying, the first time I move.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right. Sure to feel a bit stiff at first. I say, he has padded you out well in the chest and over the shoulders.”