It was really rather galling, and he half-regretted having spent all his money on Emmeline. Since joining the service he had been home on leave before, of course, but not as an ordinary seaman of a first-class battleship, and he was well aware that as such he would be a person of some importance in the village. The blacksmith's son, Tom Sellon, had left Caxton a mere country yokel to join the army. The winter previous, as a strapping, full-fledged private of one of his Majesty's line regiments, he had come home on a few days' furlough resplendent in a wonderful red tunic. His arrival created no small stir, for Caxton lay in the heart of the Midlands, and its inhabitants were unused to the pomp and circumstance of war. Sellon, moreover, thought a great deal of himself. According to him, Great Britain was inhabited by two classes of people, those who were in the army and those who were not, and he treated all 'civvies,' as he called them, with kindly tolerance. He stood treat in a lordly sort of way at the 'Flying Swan,' and condescended to drink what beer the village magnates offered him in return for this hospitality. He was not averse to being friendly with their pretty daughters either. In short, a scarlet tunic and an air of self-assurance had worked wonders, for before he donned the red coat Tom had been a mere nonentity. Now he was a personage, with a capital P, and had even pretended to be rather diffident about accepting half-a-sovereign which the squire, who had known him since childhood, pressed into his palm one Sunday after church.
Now Pincher, who knew little of the army, cordially despised soldiers in his heart of hearts. He longed to cut out Tom Sellon, but this cursed lack of money at the critical moment had upset all his plans. He could have wept from sheer vexation, for there seemed no alternative to spending Christmas on board.
But it so happened that the railway company wished to know the number of men proceeding by rail the next morning, and at 'Quarters' that afternoon Tickle ordered all the men of the starboard watch of his division to fall in on the right. Pincher went with them.
'Are any of you men not going away by rail to-morrow morning?' the officer asked.
Four hands went up at once.
'Why aren't you going?' Tickle asked the first man.
'Spendin' the leaf in Weymouth, sir.'
'And you?' to the next.
'I lives in Dorchester, sir. Goin' on by a later train.'
'Ain't takin' th' leaf, sir,' said the third.