The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of the _réveille_ echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an ordinary morning the _réveille_ is practically negatived, and nobody thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the _réveille_. For the fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to--a remnant of the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room. The soldier's wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the washing of its inmates--for which services each man pays her a penny a day, has from time immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing a "morning" on the Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for." Accordingly, about a quarter to six, she enters the room--a hard-featured, rough-voiced dame, perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder of mutton, but a soldier herself to the very core and with a big, tender heart somewhere about her. She carries a bottle of whisky--it is always whisky, somehow--in one hand and a glass in the other; and, beginning with the oldest soldier administers a calker to every one in the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom, if he be a pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal salute in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.