Within twenty-four hours of his arrival in barracks, Herbert Larkins was bathed, cropped, clothed, numbered, and, so to speak, put away. His ‘rags,’ in plain English, his civilian clothes--invariably so called whether undeniable garments or veritable rags--had been exchanged for uniform, such as it was. A recruit, and especially in the fall of the year, when the annual issue of new clothing is near at hand, gets only things ‘part worn.’ So Herbert’s shell jacket, his regimental trousers, and his ammunition boots, were all of them palpable misfits. He said as much to the corporal of the pioneers, who helped the quartermaster-sergeant in rigging out recruits. ‘Too large?’ replied the corporal, contemptuously. ‘Wait till you’re at the extension motions, or at club drill, and you’ll wish they were more than twice as big.’ ‘But my trousers are too long, and--’ ‘It’ll be longer before you get another pair. Besides, you ain’t done growing yet. Two months on full rations, and you’ll be as tall as a hop-pole. How do you think your legs ’d look then? Showing half a yard of sock above the high-lows, and the captain ’d be safe to put you down for a new pair of bags.’ ‘And these boots are far too loose. I can’t feel the sides even.’ ‘You’ll feel something else afore long, I can tell you, and not half so soft as leather. Them boots! Why, flash Alick Nokes wore them till he went “out”--and it ’d take a dozen Johnny Raws like you to make half a soldier such as him.’ Yet Herbert had really some reason to be discontented with his personal appearance. Always a trim and dapper youth, his patroness, Lady Farrington, had loved to see him neatly dressed, and had cheerfully paid his tailor’s bills when at Deadham school. But now, speaking exactly, he was not dressed at all; his figure was only concealed with clothes. His jacket was baggy at the back; the arms were so long that the cuffs came as far as his knuckles; his trousers, if they had been tied in at the ankle, would have suited a Janissary Turk; his forage-cap--it was before the days of smart glengarries--not yet ‘blocked’ and set up, fell like a black pudding-bag, over one forehead and one ear. His boots were quite amorphous, quite without form, and they might have been void were it not probable they encased a pair of feet shaped like wedges of Cheshire cheese. So deteriorating was the effect of these incongruous habiliments, that Herbert Larkins seemed to lose his erect bearing and springy step; and as he reached the barrack-room, to which he was presently marched, carrying his kit-bag full of cleaning utensils under one arm, and his new knapsack under the other, he hung his head and looked utterly ashamed of himself. ‘Oh! it’s you is it?’ said the sergeant in charge of the room, who took him over from the corporal of the pioneers. Herbert recognised the sergeant with whom he had had the colloquy at the barrack-gate.