"Are you only just beginning to find that out?"
"You'll be a case for the hospital before very long, and then what good will you have done, for yourself, for anyone?"
"That's a question which I put to myself--so often. Please don't bully me. You never have seen me cry, have you? But I shall cry if you do; and I feel that if I once start I shall never stop. Have you any news? That's the medicine I want, and a doctor who will give it me."
"I'm more than half disposed to telegraph to someone who'd pack you off to the sea; you'll brood yourself ill."
"The sea won't do me any good; I've told you the only medicine which will. Have you any?"
"News? Of a sort. The regiment is all at sixes and sevens; in the whole of its history there's never been such a state of things before."
"What's wrong now with your precious regiment?"
"Everything. There's a bad spirit abroad in the mess; there's continual friction, the fellows are all at loggerheads, there's something that jars."
"So there ought to be, amongst such a set of individuals as constitute your mess."
"I've something to tell which you may regard as some of that medicine you are looking for."