“Yes, a pipe band, what else?” enquired Sergeant Mackay truculently.
“Why don't they send up their real band, when they're doin' it, anyway?”
“What!” shouted Sergeant Mackay. “I'll tell you. For the same reason that they don't make you O. C. in this battalion, you damned fat lobster! There now, you've started me swearin' again, and I was quittin' it.”
Sergeant Mackay's wrath at the slur cast upon the pipe band, the only band, in his opinion, worthy of any real man's attention, was intensified by his lapse into his habit of profanity, which, out of deference to the Pilot, he for some weeks had been earnestly striving to hold in check.
“Oh well, Scotty, don't spoil your record for me. I guess a pipe band is all right for them that likes that kind of music. For me, I can't ever tell when they quit tunin' up and begin to play.”
Sergeant Mackay looked at him with darkening face, evidently uncertain as to what course he should adopt—whether to “turn himself loose” upon this benighted Englishman or to abandon him to his deserved condition of fatuous ignorance. He decided upon the latter course. In portentous silence he turned his back upon Fatty Matthews and walked the whole length of the line to get a mule back over the rope. It took him some little time for the mule had his own mind about the manoeuvre and the sergeant was unwontedly deliberate and gentle with him. Then, the manoeuver executed, he walked slowly back to the pioneer sergeant and in restrained and carefully chosen speech addressed him.
“Look here, Fatty, I'm askin' you, don't you ever say things like that outside of these lines, for the sake of the regiment, you know. I'd really hate the other battalions to know we had got such—” He halted himself abruptly and then proceeded more quietly, “A man as you in this battalion. My God, Fatty, they'd think your brains had run down into your pants. I know they haven't, because I know you haven't any.” He took a fresh breath, and continued his address in a tone of patient remonstrance. “Why, man, don't you know that wherever the British Army has gone, its Highland regiments have cleared the way; and that when the pipes get playin' the devil himself couldn't hold them back?”
“I don't wonder,” said Fatty innocently. “They make a man feel like fightin' all right.”
Sergeant Mackay scanned his face narrowly, uncertain as to whether he should credit the pioneer sergeant with intelligence sufficient to produce a sarcasm.
“What I mean is,” exclaimed Fatty, seeking to appease the wrathful transport sergeant, “when you hear them pipes, you get so stirred up, you know, that you just feel like kullin' somebody.”