"Now, look here: you've made a dam' poor show so far, and this is your last chance. If you don't take it, God help you, for I won't. See?"
Snatt stared at his boot, swallowed twice, and then fixed his gaze on some distant point above the opposite stable.
"Ye-es, sir," he said huskily.
"Very well. Now you've never had a job of your own, and I'm going to try you with one. You'll take over the wheel of A subsection gun team to-day, and have those two remounts to drive. I shall give you a fortnight's trial. If I see you're trying, I'll do all I can for you. Otherwise—out you go. Understand that?"
Again the deep interest in the distant point, but this time there was a trace of surprise in the faintly uttered, "Yes, sir."
Snatty saluted and retired, wondering greatly. The wheel-driver of a gun team is an important personage: he occupies a coveted position attained only by those who combine skill, nerve, and horsemanship with the ability to tend a pair of horses as they would their own children, and to clean a double set of harness better than their fellows. Snatty at first was resentful: "'E's put me there to make a fool of me, I s'pose. All right, I'll show 'im up. I can drive as well as any of them." Then he experienced a feeling of pleasurable anticipation. As it so happened he detested the driver whose place he was to take, and he looked forward with satisfaction to witnessing the fury of that worthy when ordered to "hand over" to the despised waster of the battery. He was not grateful—that was not his nature—nor was he proud of having been selected. He was on the defensive, determined to show that, given a definite position with duties and responsibilities of his own, he could do very well—if he chose. Which was precisely the frame of mind into which his thoughtful subaltern had hoped to lure him.
In the barrack-room Snatty met with much abuse. In a battery which prides itself enormously on its horses, any ill-treatment of them is not left unnoticed. Barrack-room invective does not take the form of delicate sarcasm: on the contrary, it is coarse and directly to the point. The culprit sat upon his bed-cot and sulked in silence, until a carroty-headed driver, sitting on the table with his hat on the back of his head, remarked—
"I see ole Biddie givin' you a proper chokin' off after stables."
The chance for which Snatty had waited very patiently had come, and he retorted quickly—
"Oh! did yer? Well, p'raps you'll be glad to 'ear that 'e 'as given me your 'orses and the wheel of A sub., says you're no —— use, 'e does!"