"Rolls are up to date; everything's up to date, and I'm square with the game again," replied the paymaster, locking his desk and pocketing the key. "About ready to stroll along, Colonel? Brown has stuck his head in through the doorway a couple of times, with an expression on his face which forces me to think that he considers our room worth more than our company."
"I'm ready to call quits," said the colonel, folding his letter and slipping it into an envelope. "Hello, Brown!" to the armorer, who had made a third suggestive appearance at the door. "Keeping you up? Too bad! Well, you may put out these lights, and in a minute more we'll be out of my room, too. Come along, Pay, it's time decent people were at home."
"But we're not 'decent people,'" objected the paymaster, as he followed the colonel to his private room beyond; "we're officers of the militia, and, in the estimation of many worthy citizens, that ranks us just one peg below decency. You know Vandercrumb—old Judge Vandercrumb? Well, t'other day he was at my house and happened to see my commission hanging in the library. 'What!' says he, in a politely disgusted sort of way, 'you in the militia? Well, I must say, Langforth, I'm surprised to find you guilty of that!'" and the paymaster laughed, as he remembered the inflection with which the words had been spoken. The colonel laughed, too, for Langforth had imitated to perfection the tones of shocked respectability, and the anecdote amused him the more because it bore so close a resemblance to many experiences of his own.
"It always has been so," he said, as he drew on his light overcoat, "and always will be, I dare say. People see only one side—the 'fuss and feather' aspect—of volunteering, and the traditions of the old 'milishy' days are slow in dying out. Well, I suppose we can stand it all, but at times it galls a bit."
"Yes, it is rather rough, to work hard and faithfully, year in and year out, and then be rewarded by hearing some fellow at one's club wondering 'how the devil anybody can take any interest in such boy's play,'" said the paymaster, whose honest love for the service made him peculiarly sensitive to any covert sneers directed at it. "But, as you say, we can stand it; and, besides," he went on, "we have our fun in our quiet way, and I'm weak enough to pity the outsiders, for they miss more downright sport than I would be willing to forego."
"Yes, we certainly have our fun," said Colonel Elliott, as he walked with the paymaster down the granite steps of the armory and out into the deserted street, "but it's been 'all work' to-night, eh, Langforth? Phew! I've written, since eight o'clock, more letters than there are in the whole condemned alphabet."
"I've done my share, too," remarked his companion, taking advantage of the glare of a chance electric light to consult his watch. "Quarter past eleven; well, it might be worse."
"Say, Langforth," observed the colonel, abruptly halting as they came to a corner, "if we switch off here and step out a trifle faster we can flank The Battery, get a pewter and a sandwich, and do it all before midnight. What do you say—do or don't?"
"Heads, we go; tails, we also go—home," replied Langforth, yawning, and extracting from his change pocket a nickel. "Tails—and be hanged to it!" he ejaculated, as he held the coin up to the light. "Well, that settles it; we'll go up to The Battery. It takes more than a miserable five-cent bit to send me hungry and thirsty to bed."