I handed the letter to the general, who read it through and nodded. "Hah! that's right," he said, handing it back. "Nothing like having an uncle rich, and a director at the India House. You'll get into the horse by-and-by. Let's see, what was your uncle?" "An indigo-planter, sir." "Hah! that means money, Vincent. Well, I shall not have to draw on your father. So much the better. There, you had better begin making your preparations at once, and if there is anything I can do in the way of help or advice, come to me without scruple. Seems only the other day that I was ordering my own kit, Vincent, previous to sailing for Bombay. There, off with you. I'm sure you want to digest the news." I did--badly, but I could not do it, for the news had already leaked out, and there was Morton at the head of all the other fellows, ready to raise a hearty cheer for the new officer about to depart from their midst. The cheering was followed by a chairing, and when at last I escaped, I hurried off to my room with the whirl of confusion greater than ever, so that I began to wonder whether it was not all a dream. CHAPTER TWO. I was horribly suspicious about that military tailor in Saint James's Street. Over and over again I felt that he must be laughing at me, as he passed his tape round my chest and waist. But he was a pattern of smooth politeness, and as serious as a judge, while I sought for little bits of encouragement, painfully conscious as I was about my physique. He was so quiet and confidential, and took such pains to suggest the various articles I should require, that I felt bound to place myself in his hands, and to a certain extent he won my confidence sufficiently to make me ask a _few_ questions, to set myself a little at my ease. "Don't often have any one so thin and young as I am to measure for a uniform, do you?" I said. He looked at me with astonishment--real or assumed. "Thin as you, sir! Oh, you are nothing to some gentlemen--I mean," he added hastily, "as to being slender. Why, some officers who come here are little better than schoolboys." "But I am thin," I said. "Slight, sir," he said reprovingly--"slight. I should hardly call you thin. You'd look a little thin in evening-dress, but in uniform only slight. You see, we are obliged to pad a little in the chest, and to square the shoulders a little, and, one way and another, sir, when we have finished you, you will be surprised." I was. But just then I only coughed, and felt glad that I was not the youngest and thinnest officer the tailor had fitted out. "Oh, by the way," I said as indifferently as I could, "what about swords?" I felt proud of my nonchalantly easy way of dealing so familiarly with the _arme blanche_, as the French call it, in the plural number.