CURTISS. Then we're pretty certain to have a heavy go of it. Heigho! I shouldn't mind changing places with Gaddy for a while. 'Sport with Amaryllis in the shade of the Town Hall, and all that. Oh, why doesn't somebody come and marry me, instead of letting me go into cholera camp? MACKESY. Ask the Committee. CURTISS. You ruffian! You'll stand me another peg for that. Blayne, what will you take? Mackesy is fine on moral grounds. Doone, have you any preference? DOONE. Small glass Kummel, please. Excellent carminative, these days. Anthony told me so. MACKESY. (_Signing voucher for four drinks._) Most unfair punishment. I only thought of Curtiss as Actaeon being chivied round the billiard tables by the nymphs of Diana. BLAYNE. Curtiss would have to import his nymphs by train. Mrs. Cockley's the only woman in the Station. She won't leave Cockley, and he's doing his best to get her to go. CURTISS. Good, indeed! Here's Mrs. Cockley's health. To the only wife in the Station and a damned brave woman! OMNES. (_Drinking._) A damned brave woman! BLAYNE. I suppose Gaddy will bring his wife here at the end of the cold weather. They are going to be married almost immediately, I believe. CURTISS. Gaddy may thank his luck that the Pink Hussars are all detachment and no headquarters this hot weather, or he'd be torn from the arms of his love as sure as death. Have you ever noticed the thorough-minded way British Cavalry take to cholera? It's because they are so expensive. If the Pinks had stood fast here, they would have been out in camp a month ago. Yes, I should decidedly like to be Gaddy. MACKESY. He'll go Home after he's married, and send in his papers--see if he doesn't. BLAYNE. Why shouldn't he? Hasn't he money? Would any one of us be here if we weren't paupers? DOONE. Poor old pauper! What has became of the six hundred you rooked from our table last month? BLAYNE. It took unto itself wings. I think an enterprising tradesman got some of it, and a _shroff_ gobbled the rest--or else I spent it. CURTISS. Gaddy never had dealings with a _shroff_ in his life. DOONE. Virtuous Gaddy! If _I_ had three thousand a month, paid from England, I don't think I'd deal with a _shroff_ either. MACKESY. (Yawning.) Oh, it's a sweet life! I wonder whether matrimony would make it sweeter. CURTISS. Ask Cockley--with his wife dying by inches! BLAYNE. Go home and get a fool of a girl to come out to--what is it Thackeray says?--'the splendid palace of an Indian pro-consul.' DOONE. Which reminds me. My quarters leak like a sieve. I had fever last night from sleeping in a swamp. And the worst of it is, one can't do anything to a roof till the Rains are over. CURTISS. What's wrong with you? _You_ haven't eighty rotting Tommies to take into a running stream. DOONE. No: but I'm mixed boils and bad language. I'm a regular Job all over my body. It's sheer poverty of blood, and I don't see any chance of getting richer--either way. BLAYNE. Can't you take leave?