"We had better send down to the workhouse people to come and remove the child at once. Otherwise, we may have endless trouble with the mother; and, moreover, if it once got about that these barracks were open to that kind of thing, the regiment would soon be turned into a regular foundling hospital. Let the workhouse people be sent for at once. What did you say, Mr. Jervis? That the child might be quartered for a few hours among the married people. Yes, I daresay, but if the mother is on the look-out, which is very doubtful, she is more likely to go to the police-station than she is to come here. As to any stigma, the mother should have borne that in mind when she lost the child. On second thoughts, I think it is to the police-station that we should send; yes, that will be quite the best thing to do." A few hours later the child Susy was transferred from the guard-room to the police-station, and there she made herself equally at home, only asking occasionally, in a perfunctory kind of way, for "Mammy," and being quite easily satisfied when she was told that she would be coming along by-and-by. During the few hours that she was at the police-station she became quite a favourite, and made friends with all the stalwart constables, just as she had done with one and all of the strapping Hussars at the cavalry barracks. She was not shy, for she answered the magistrate in quite a friendly way, though she gave no information as to her belongings, simply because she had no information to give. And the end was that she was condemned to the workhouse, and was carried off to that undesirable haven as soon as the interview with the magistrate was over. "A blooming shame, I call it, poor little kid," said Private Flinders that evening to a group of his friends, in the comfortable safety of the troop-room. "She was a jolly little lass; and if I’d been a married man, I’d have kept her myself, dashed if I wouldn’t!" "Perhaps your missis might ’ave ’ad a word or two to say to that, Flinders," cried a natty fellow, just up to the standard in height, and no more. "Oh, I’d have made it all right with her," returned Flinders, with that easy assurance of everything good that want of experience gives. "But to send it to the workhouse--it’s a blooming shame! They treat kids anyhow in them places. Now then, Thomson, what are you a-grinning at? Perhaps you know as much about workhouses as I can tell you." "Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t," replied Thomson, with provoking good temper. "I wasn’t a-laughing at the workhouse; cussing them is more like what one feels. But to think of you, old chap, tramping up and down with the blessed kid asleep--well, it beats everything I ever heard tell of, blame me if it don’t."