"Passably."
"That is, you can understand what a Frenchman or a German says?"
"Everything, sir."
"Good! I'll speak to my Colonel right away. But let's strike while the iron is hot. You came here to enlist as a private, you say. In that case let's get through the medical business at once."
"I'm all right, sir."
"That must be proved. You are big enough, Heaven knows! Six feet high, aren't you?"
"Just a trifle above that."
"And forty inches around the chest, I should think. Come this way."
A few minutes later Bob had been overhauled by a doctor.
"Sound as a bell," was the doctor's verdict.