“Ask him to come in.”
There entered Peabody of the Chalkshires, grin on brown face.
“My word, P.J.—you are a swell.”
“Think so?” Peter looked up from his list.
“Rather.” Peabody threw cap and cane on the bare floor; drew himself up a chair; lit a cigarette. “I thought you’d like to hear about Locksley—beg his pardon, Locksley-Jones, Mister Locksley-Jones. No longer ‘Captain and Adjutant,’ you will observe.”
Bromley, just back from the Larkhill training course, lounged through the door in time to hear part of the last sentence.
“What’s that about Locksley?”
“Got the boot,” said Peabody laconically.
“How?” asked the two Gunners simultaneously.
“Nobody quite knows. One day he was in the Orderly Room—and the next, he just wasn’t. Of course, there have been heaps of rumours. . . . The C.O. gave us one of his ‘pi-jaws’ yesterday—you know the way the old man lisps when he lectures—all about ‘the honour of the Regiment.’ I think he knows pretty well what Locksley has been doing, because he said—rather decent of him I thought: ‘Of course I understand some of you have had a good deal to put up with’ . . . I believe,” Peabody shook his young head, “that there must have been something wrong with the Battalion accounts.”