Though our soldiers are generally too young to have wives nowadays, in these short-service times, a few years ago it was not so; thus several women of the Rifle Battalion, some with babies in their arms, had followed it to Southampton to see the last of those they might never look upon again.
'Good-bye, my poor Mary,' Goring heard a young soldier cry, looking wistfully to his girl-wife, who stood weeping on the quay, where she held up their baby from time to time. 'How are you to get back to camp?'
'Never mind, Tom darling; I'm here, anyhow.'
'Have you any money?'
'No.'
'God help you, darling,' he replied, and proceeded in a mechanical but hopeless way to investigate his pockets.
'I'll take her back, and all the women of ours who are here. Pass the message along, lads,' cried Bevil Goring, who now gave a sergeant carte blanche to distribute money among all for what they required, and directing them all to meet him at the railway station next morning.
'Three cheers for Captain Goring!' was now the cry, and many men crowded gratefully forward to salute him and shake his hand, while he felt now that he could spend some of the rupees of Bevil Goring of Chowringee to good purpose; and sure enough he met his strange detachment at the station next morning; and after giving them a hearty breakfast, including buns and cans of milk galore for the little ones, he brought them all into camp, while the transport was steaming down the waters of the Solent, and heading for the Channel.
But in this part of our narrative we are anticipating certain events which occurred at Southampton, and which Dalton and Goring, but more particularly the former, were destined to have long in their memory.