"What's that, Ted? You never said anything of the sort? Why, you young bargee, of course you did!" went on the tormentor. "You talked of poisoning Jim's grub, and what not.---- Well, Captain Russell, once more: Are her eyes black, blue, brown, purple, violet, green, yellow, red, or a mixture, or perchance, is she an albino?" "Oh, I dunno! Something between green and blue, as you seem so anxious to know." "Peacock-blue, shall we say? That's a pity! Violet is the favourite hue with lady novelists--either violet, or purple, or heliotrope. Did you ever see a woman with eyes of heliotrope hue, young 'un?" "No, nor don't want to." "That's very decided. Now then, Jim, cut along! Eyes, peacock-blue; nose, Roman, Grecian, snub, or what? Grecian? Right. Jot it down. Size? Ted says she's a dwarf. What? Ted a liar? Surely the boy has not been deceiving me who trusted in him?" "I never said anything of the kind!" interrupted Ted indignantly. "Don't believe a word he says, Jim." "Oh, Teddy, Teddy, this to your loving cousin? Now, you know that you said she was smaller than you!" Charlie asserted with a show of indignant surprise at the ensign's perfidy. "Well, we're getting at it slowly," Dorricot continued. "Nose Grecian; peacock-blue eyes; size five feet nothing; hair brown; rides well; shoots mullahs in the _bazar_ for sport, failing partridges; loads rifles with considerable ease--for a woman; sings divinely--isn't that the expression?--" "Hold on, old man, that's the whole catalogue!" interrupted Jim. "You'll see her some day, I hope. Now what about this present business?" Captain Russell then proceeded to give an account of their great march, and Dorricot told of the temptations placed before his men. "As we halted one day on the march down to Meerut," he informed the brothers, "a number of sappers who were on the point of mutiny approached our lads and began to talk earnestly to them. We pretended to take no notice, but when the sappers had left, Reid called a couple of the Gurkhas to him. The little men trotted up, quivering with anger and indignation. "'Well, what did those fellows want, my lads?' he enquired. "'They asked us if we were going up to Meerut to eat the _ottah_ (flour) sent up specially by government for the Gurkhas,' one of them replied. 'And they said that the _ottah_ at Meerut was nothing but ground bullock bones, and that we should be defiled.' "'And what was your answer?' asked Reid. "The little beggars drew themselves up proudly. "'We said that we were going wherever we were ordered; that our regiment obeys the bugle-call!'" "Good little men!" commented the captain of the Guides, as his cousin concluded. "Our own Gurkha company would be hard to beat. Look at Subadar Merban Sing! the man who tried to save poor Battye. His men simply adore him; they'd do anything for him, and go anywhere with him. But aren't your 'almond-eyed Tartars' Hindus by religion? How did they take the greased-cartridge yarn?"