Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/119

 capable of looking after two horses and a set of harness—really looking after them—and not before. Then they go, or most of them, and the service knows them no more. However, all that is beside the point.

Wandering dispassionately round the stables one day, I perceived the eight, mounted on blankets, sitting on their horses, while a satirical and somewhat livery rough-riding corporal commented on the defects of their figures, their general appearance, and their doubtful claim to existence at all, in a way that is not uncommon with rough riders. Then for the first time I saw Brown—Driver Robert Brown, to give him his full name.

“I ’ad a harnt once, No. 3. She was sixty-four, and weighed twenty stone. And if she’d ’a been sitting on that there ’orse of yours she’d have looked just like you: only ’er chest grew in front and not be’ind like yours.”

No. 3 was Driver Robert Brown. I passed on. The presence of an officer sometimes tends to check the airy persiflage which flows so gracefully from the lips of riding instructors.

A week after I inquired of the Corporal as