"My thanks to you, Brotherton, for supplying so plausible an explanation. I'll salve my pride of pedigree with it next time I'm taken for a traveling quack, and Prussian soldiers suffering with indigestion apply to me for pills and black-dose." He added, with his pleasant laugh, catching P. C. Breagh's glance of incredulity: "Actual fact, and no embroidery, I assure you! You understand that to emphasize the strictly pacific nature of my calling, I'm exploiting my honorary degree for all it's worth!" He added, rather pointedly addressing the handsome cavalryman, "I've no special ambition to be shot as a combatant!"
"Nor have I," said the man in sporting checks, warmly. "And, Brotherton, my dear fellow, if this 'ere 'umble individual may add his advice to the counsel you've already had from the man, by Jove! who of all men knows best what he's talkin' about, you'll stow that 'ere lady-killing uniform, and the silver helmet with the flowin' plume away in some spare portmanteau, and leave 'em with your saber and the dazzlin' horse-furniture you showed me this morning in charge of the landlord here, until you come back from the war-path safe and sound. Am I talking 'oss sense, Doctor?"
"Indeed you are, Tower!" agreed the Doctor. "And, Chris, if you'll listen to him, I'll be eternally grateful to you, for your own sake. You've too much of what Tower and the Yankees call 'horse sense' not to know you're handicapped as a war correspondent by your glorious panoply!"
The Major smiled, and said, smoothing the drooping mustache with a fine white hand that wore a diamond-set signet:
"You can't blame me for thirsting to carry the harness I've worn in sham fights for nearly half my lifetime, where bullets are flying in real earnest?"
"Not a bit, dear fellow," said the Doctor, with a twinkle, "so long as you thirst to do it and don't! That letter 'R' on your shoulder-cord is hardly big enough to serve as cover where those bullets are plentiful. And with your influence, prospects in life, and position, you'd be an ingrate to Fate if you were anxious to die at thirty-four."
Said Brotherton, knitting his fair eyebrows over the restless fire in his handsome eyes:
"Influence has been my bane, and the two other things have stood in my light ever since I was an urchin in knickerbockers. I've been Queen's page, and Prince's Equerry, and aide-de-camp on the Duke's Staff, and I've never seen an army in the field, or smelt powder, except at Aldershot, or Shorncliffe, or the Curragh of Kildare, or at carbine-practice. What luck do you call that?"
"Dashed hard!" said Tower.
Brotherton went on: