"Rejoice then, Major, and be exceeding glad, for I believe this is the man who wrote the book and plugged—or was it plumbed—the potentate."
The Chief Medical Officer rubbed his hands. "I promise myself a crack or twa wi' him, then.... But how is it a busy chiel like that can get awa' from his private patients and his Hospital warr'ds in the London Winter Season Ahem! ahem!"
By the haste the Medical Officer developed in changing the conversation, it was plain that he had recalled the circumstances under which the "busy chiel" had turned his back upon the private patients and the Hospital wards. "Colonel," he went on, "I could be wishing this varry creeditable-appearing institution—judging from the ootside o't—were twice as big as it is, wi' maybe an Annexe or so to the back of that."
"My dear Major, I never knew you really satisfied and happy but once, and that was when we had fifty men down with dysentery and fever in a tin-roofed Railway goods-shed, and a hundred and seventy more under leaky canvas, and you were out of chlorodyne and quinine, and could get no milk."
"That goes to prove the eleementary difference between the male an' the female character. A man will no' keep on dithering for what he kens he canna' get. A woman, especially a young an' pretty——" He broke off to say: "Toch! will ye hark to Beauvayse! The very name of the sex sets that lad rampaging."
"Beautiful! I tell you, sir," the handsome, fair-haired young aide-de-camp was emphatically assuring that stout, rubicund personage, the Mayor, "the loveliest girl I ever saw in my life, or ever shall see—bar none! I saw her first on the Recreation Ground, the day a gang of Boer blackguards insulted some nuns who were in charge of a ladies' school, and to-day she passed with two other Sisters of Mercy, and I touched my hat to her as the Staff dismounted at the gate."
"Another rara avis, Beau?" the Colonel called across the intervening group of talkers. The group of khâki-clad figures separated, and turned first to the Chief, then to the bright-eyed, bright-faced enthusiast. White teeth flashed in tanned faces, chaff began:
"In love again, for the first and only time, Toby?"
"Since he lost his heart to Miss What's-her-name, that pretty 'Jollity' girl, with the double-barrelled repeating wink, and the postcard grin."
"Don't forget the velvet-voiced beauty of the dark, moonless night on the Cape Town Hotel verandah!"