"Good-night"—"Good-night, old chap"—"Good-night, my son"—the men shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely saluted.
"It's Peter," said T——; "he'll be frightfully bucked up."
"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase—the rest of the household were plunged in slumber—turned the handle of the bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.
"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's shoulder from the window.
"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They saluted me! Did you see?" he said, turning to me.
"I did, Major Peter."
"You're kidding!"
"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to salute you too, now."
This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was ordering him to bed. At such times—there was a nightly contest on the matter—the paternal authority could not afford to concede any prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning.
"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know lots of officers up there. I'll introduce you," he added patronisingly. Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards. "Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Cock-House at Fellsgarth, and Newbolt's Pages from Froissart. Peter was rather eclectic in his tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents of Peter's pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys' jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental inventory of them: