Lance-Corporal Ness steps briskly forward and lays a grubby forefinger on Bobby's "mine."
"Private Mucklewame, show me a burn."
The brook is at once identified.
"Private M'Leary, shut your eyes and tell me what there is just to the right of the windmill."
"A wee knowe, sirr," replies M'Leary at once. Bobby recognises his "low knoll"—also the fact that it is no use endeavouring to instruct the unlettered until you have learned their language.
"Very good!" says Captain Wagstaffe. "Now we will go on to what is known as Description and Recognition of Targets. Supposing I had sent one of you forward into that landscape as a scout.—By the way, what is a scout?"
Dead silence, as usual.
"Come along! Tell me, somebody! Private Mucklewame?"
"They gang oot in a procession on Setter-day efternoons, sirr, in short breeks," replies Mucklewame promptly.
"A procession is the very last thing a scout goes out in!" raps Wagstaffe. (It is plain to Mucklewame that the Captain has never been in Wishaw, but he does not argue the point.) "Private M'Micking, what is a scout?"