“Yes, far too much.”
“Not a bit of it. Makes you look broader-chested and square-shouldered—more of the man. But, here, Lieutenant Lacey wants you up at his quarters. Sent that chuckle-headed Joe Todd, his servant, to fetch you directly.”
“What does he want?” cried Dick, aghast with the idea that something had been found out.
“Go and ask him.”
“But I must change first.”
“Nonsense! Go as you are. You’ve got to wear the red now,” added the man, with a grin.
Dick went down into the barrack yard, to find the lieutenant’s servant waiting, and followed him, with the peculiar tremor increasing, and a cold, dank perspiration breaking out about his temples and in the palms of his hands.
A few minutes after he was ushered into the handsomely-furnished rooms which formed the lieutenant’s quarters; and he felt a pang shoot through him for the moment as the piano in one corner, and some music and a flute upon the table, recalled his own rooms at Draycott’s.
But his thoughts were back directly to his troubles, and he felt a kind of momentary relief on finding that there was no one in the sitting-room.
“I’ll go and tell him you’re here,” said the man who had fetched him, and he lifted a curtain, caught his foot against a fold, stumbled, and drove his head with a crash against the panel of the door beyond. Then, as the curtain fell behind him, Dick heard, in smothered tones:—