Five minutes, twenty, half an hour pass fairly fast for them, less fast for the keener warriors pawing the kerbstone without. At the end of an hour fifty per cent. of the kerbstone zealots have been successfully frozen into the bars. The rest stare at each other with a wild surmise. Rumour shakes her wings and begins to fly round. The sergeant-major, she says, is holding a species of court in the depths of the pub; some privates with money upon them, children of this world, are pressing in, she says, even now, into that heart of the rose, and with a few manly words are standing the great man the extremely expensive combination of nectars that he prefers. "Were it not better done as others use?"--the Spartan residuum on the kerb is diminishing. Another hour goes; only an inconsiderable remnant of Spartans is left; these are exchanging profane remarks about patriotism and other virtues. One of them quotes a famous Conservative statesman whose footman he was before he enlisted: "I believe we shall win, in spite of the Regular Army." When just enough time is left to march back to quarters the whistle is blown, the men slouch into their places and stump unrhythmically home, revolving many things according to their several natures. A child who has rashly taken its parent on trust, and yet more rashly taken the parent's all-round perfection as some sort of sample and proof of a creditable government of the world, must have a good deal of mental rearrangement to do the first time the parent comes home full of liquor and sells the furniture to get some more. III Perhaps, in another company or another battalion, some private of relative wealth has felt, in the strength of his youth and the heat of his zeal, that he wants more to do. He longs to get on with the job. So he guilelessly goes to his own sergeant-major and asks him if there is a chance of getting some lessons in bayonet-fighting anywhere in the town. The sergeant-major sizes him up with a stare. "You're a fine likely man," he says, "for a stripe." He stares harder. "Or three," he subjoins. The gilded youth is confounded. He an N.C.O.! He would as soon have thought of being a primate. "I'll give you," the Old Army continues, "the lessons myself. It'll be twelve quid--_for the lot_." To reproduce the emphasis upon the last three words is beyond the resources of typography.