"I've been verra drunk, laddie. And I've been angry with you for the
first time in my life. But when you knocked the glass out of my hand I
thought you were in danger of losing your good manners in the army.
We'll have many a pow-wow together when you join me out there."
The matter would have drifted out of Doggie's mind as one of no
importance had not the detested appellation by which Phineas hailed
him struck the imagination of his comrades. It filled a long-felt
want, no nickname for Private J. M. Trevor having yet been invented.
Doggie Trevor he was and Doggie Trevor he remained for the rest of his
period of service. He resigned himself to the inevitable. The sting
had gone out of the name through his comrades' ignorance of its
origin. But he loathed it as much as ever; it sounded in his ears an
everlasting reproach.
In spite of the ill turn done in drunkenness, Doggie missed McPhail.
He missed Mo Shendish, his more constant companion, even more. Their
place was in some degree taken, or rather usurped, for it was without
Doggie's volition, by "Taffy" Jones, once clerk to a firm of outside
bookmakers. As Doggie had never seen a racecourse, had never made a
bet, and was entirely ignorant of the names even of famous Derby
winners, Taffy regarded him as an astonishing freak worth the
attention of a student of human nature. He began to cultivate Doggie's
virgin mind by aid of reminiscence, and of such racing news as was to
be found in the _Sportsman_. He was a garrulous person and Doggie a
good listener. To please him Doggie backed horses, through the old
firm, for small sums. The fact of his being a man of large independent
means both he and Phineas (to his credit) had kept a close secret, his
clerkly origin divined and promulgated by Mo Shendish being
unquestioningly accepted, so the bets proposed by Taffy were of a
modest nature. Once he brought off a forty to one chance. Taffy rushed
to him with the news, dancing with excitement. Doggie's stoical
indifference to the winning of twenty pounds, a year's army pay, gave
him cause for great wonder. As Doggie showed similar equanimity when
he lost, Taffy put him down as a born sportsman. He began to admire
him tremendously.
This friendship with Taffy is worth special record, for it was
indirectly the cause of a little revolution in Doggie's regimental
life. Taffy was an earnest though indifferent performer on the penny
whistle. It was his constant companion, the solace of his leisure
moments and one of the minor tortures of Doggie's existence. His
version of the _Marseillaise_ was peculiarly excruciating.