The private soldier married “on the strength” usually has entered on his second period of service--that is, he has finished the twelve years for which he first contracted to serve, and has re-enlisted to complete twenty-one years with a view to a pension. Generally he manages to get a staff job of some sort, from employment on the regimental police to barrack sweeper, or anything else that will get him out of attending early morning parades as a rule--though all staff men have to attend early parades when the orders of the day say “strong as possible.” The rule in most units is that the staff jobs are distributed among the older soldiers, for these are supposed, and with justice, to be better able to dispense with perpetual training than the younger men. As a rule, the appointment of any young soldier to a staff appointment--except such posts as that of orderly-room clerk, for which special aptitude counts before length of service--is the cause of considerable bitterness among the older soldiers who are still at duty, and is usually attributed to rank favouritism, whether it is due to that or no. In cavalry regiments especially, the ordinary duty-men look for amusement when the staff men are “dug out” to undergo the ordinary routine of duty, either by way of annual training or on the occasion of a “strong as possible” parade. The duty-man has his horse every day, and horse and man get to know each other, but the staff-man, attending stables only on the occasion of his being warned to attend a duty parade, has as a rule to take any horse that is “going spare,” as they call it, and usually the horse that nobody else has taken up for riding is not a pleasant beast. And the staff-man may be a bit rusty as regards drill and riding, so that the two things combined produce the effect of involuntary dismounting in the field or at riding school occasionally--or, as the soldier would say, “dismounting by order from hind-quarters.” Taken on the whole, the staff-man’s day at duty is not a pleasant one, while, if he ventures to complain to his comrades or grumble in any way, he gets more ridicule than sympathy. Usually the duty-man affects to consider the staff-man an encumbrance, and in the cavalry even signallers, during the time that they are excused riding and attending stables, are told that it is “easy enough to wag a little bit of stick about--why don’t you come down to stables and do a bit?” The reply generally makes up in forcibility for a deficiency in elegance, for the trooper is capable of maintaining his reputation as regards the use of language--of sorts.