We were all nearly on top of the fire, except Infant, who had been long enough at home to take exercise when he felt chilled. This is a grisly diversion, but much affected by the English of the Island.
“If you say a word about cold tubs and brisk walks,” drawled McTurk, “I’ll kill you, Infant. I’ve got a liver, too. ’Member when we used to think it a treat to turn out of our beds on a Sunday morning—thermometer fifty-seven degrees if it was summer—and bathe off the Pebbleridge? Ugh!”
“’Thing I don’t understand,” said Tertius, “was the way we chaps used to go down into the lavatories, boil ourselves pink, and then come up with all our pores open into a young snow-storm or a black frost. Yet none of our chaps died, that I can remember.”
“Talkin’ of baths,” said McTurk, with a chuckle, “’member our bath in Number Five, Beetle, the night Rabbits-Eggs rocked King? What wouldn’t I give to see old Stalky now! He is the only one of the two Studies not here.”
“Stalky is the great man of his Century,” said Dick Four.
“How d’you know?” I asked.
“How do I know?” said Dick Four, scornfully. “If you’ve ever been in a tight place with Stalky you wouldn’t ask.”
“I haven’t seen him since the camp at Pindi in ’87,” I said. “He was goin’ strong then—about seven feet high and four feet through.”
“Adequate chap. Infernally adequate,” said Tertius, pulling his mustache and staring into the fire.
“Got dam’ near court-martialed and broke in Egypt in ’84,” the Infant volunteered. “I went out in the same trooper with him—as raw as he was. Only I showed it, and Stalky didn’t.”