“Whew! then it’s two o’clock,” said Sam, hastily rising. “Who’d have thought it? This aint no sort o’ way for a man o’ my age to be a-keepin’ his roses fresh.”
“Any moral in all that?” asked the adjutant, rising in his turn.
“No; nor nothin’ un-moral, neither,” chuckled the veteran, raising his hand to his cap in parting salute. “Which, in these days, is good guarantee that ’twont never be printed. Wal, good-night to ye.”
WOODLEIGH, Q.M.
Most of us have cause for remembering the hospitalities of The Fourth. The same being an up-country regiment, a visit to it involves a rail journey of three hours and thirty times as many miles; but, in view of what lies at the end of them, the ninety miles and the three hours count as nothing. For in The Fourth they know how to do things properly.
The second battalion of The Fourth sent out cards for a ball, last winter, and a round dozen of them turned up in our mail at headquarters. As a rule, we never allow an invitation from that part of the world to go unheeded; but this time we had to return our really regretful regrets, because a meeting of the council of officers had been ordered for that particular night. It was too bad.
But The Third, if for nothing more than old acquaintance’ sake, had to be represented. And so the colonel, after thoughtfully considering the varied attractions of the staff, sent for the quartermaster—“Woodleigh, Q.M.,” he signs himself, when the paper is an official one—and, after loading him down with his blessing and our compliments to the fellows of the other corps, regretfully saw him start off alone towards the scene of impending festivities. “Woodleigh’s a fine shape of man,” the colonel argued to himself, “and he’ll do for a sample of the rest of us. Besides, what earthly sort of use are quartermasters, except for ornament?” So off went Woodleigh to the ball.
In course of time he came back again, telling strange things about what had happened to him during his absence.