"That I would! One can set one's teeth then, and grin and bear it, but it's horrid disturbing, when you're trying to give your mind to regular hard grinding work, for the thought of all that kind of thing to be always intruding."
"If I didn't know you better than you know yourself, old boy, I should say not only that you didn't care a pin for her, but that you couldn't. Why, how could one carry on work at all without those very thoughts to help one?"
"You're getting libellous, Hal. It's the uncertainty, not the thoughts, that I find disturbing. If she would take me—bless her!—I'll lay you anything you like she would be the Commander-in-Chief's lady in the shortest time on record."
"Bob, it's precious hard on both of us. Whichever gets her, one of us must be miserable."
"Let us make quite sure that she's happy, then. But it's a little late to be talking like this, ain't it? What I find most cause to blame in you, Hal, is a tendency to the sentimental. Turn your mind strictly to business—namely, to receiving the orderly who is about to summon you to the presence of the high and mighty Speathley."
After the warning he had received, Gerrard was not likely to be late for his appointment, but when he arrived at Major-General Speathley's headquarters, it was evident that the Brigadier thought it salutary for junior officers to cool their heels a little in his anteroom. A number of other men were hanging about, and a low buzz of conversation filled the tent. Gerrard was known by name to most of those present, and he was soon in possession of the chief item of interest which was agitating the camp. That morning's reconnaissance had been pushed as far as Ratan Singh's tomb, which had been occupied without opposition, and a careful search had revealed the shallow grave in which the dishonoured remains of Nisbet and Cowper had been hastily hidden after the tragedy in the spring.
"The old man swears he will turn out Ratan Singh—whoever he may have been—and give the poor chaps a pucca funeral in the shrine itself," said one youth.
"I was not aware that we fought with the dead," said Gerrard, rather disgusted.
"Seems rayther a spicy idea to me," drawled another. "They do our fellows out of a grave, so we prig one of theirs for 'em."
"Surely we can do better for them than a second-hand tomb," said Gerrard, more emphatically than he realised. "Wouldn't it be more to the purpose to leave Ratan Singh in peace, since he has done us no injury, and punish the living who deserve it?"