"News? Of a sort. The regiment is all at sixes and sevens; in the whole of its history there's never been such a state of things before." "What's wrong now with your precious regiment?" "Everything. There's a bad spirit abroad in the mess; there's continual friction, the fellows are all at loggerheads, there's something that jars." "So there ought to be, amongst such a set of individuals as constitute your mess." "I've something to tell which you may regard as some of that medicine you are looking for." "Have you? That's good; what is it?" "It depends upon the point of view whether it's good or whether it's bad; from one point of view it's uncommonly bad." "I hope that's not mine." "I dare say it won't be. You know that throughout I've declined to express a positive opinion about that poker business of Beaton's." "I do; and I've hated you for it." "I'm beginning to think that there may be something in your point of view after all." "Really? That is condescension; and what has brought it about--you're beginning to think?" "I know what you think, and I know why; you must forgive me if my thoughts are on a different plane. You consider one man only, there's nothing that matters except him; to me there's a very great deal. I'm a soldier; to me the service is first and last; my regiment is all in all." "Do you think I don't know that?" "That affair of Beaton's was bad enough in all conscience; it's a tale which will be told of the regiment for many a day; but if it's going to be reopened I don't know what will become of us--I honestly do not." "You don't believe that justice should be done even if the heavens fall?" "I'm not sure that it is not better that one man should suffer, even though unjustly, rather than that a great and glorious tradition should be dragged in the mud and made a mock of." "Your sentiments do you infinite discredit; I wonder, since you hold them, that I ever let you speak to me." "Yes--well, I do hold them, and I'm going to continue to speak to you whether you let me or not." "You haven't got your medicine." "Young Tickell has made an announcement to the mess which is likely to cause trouble. He laid a cheque on the table for the amount which was in the pool that night, and he said that, as circumstances had arisen which caused him to doubt, he felt that he would like the money to be held in trust till the point was finally decided." "Bravo, Jackie! Conscience moves in a mysterious way; that really is medicine." "Yes, I thought you'd think so; it doesn't occur to you to think what the young gentleman's action means for the rest of us." "I'm hopeful that it will cause your consciences to move in a mysterious way; I've always insisted that the age of miracles is still with us." "Tickell as good as said that he doubted that Dodwell and Draycott had said the thing which was not, and if we had not all of us behaved infamously."