Page:The Story of the Gadsbys - Kipling (1888).djvu/91

 Butcha would be all the better for it. I'm going to chuck. You don't understand.

(hotly).—I understand this. One hundred and thirty-seven new horses to be licked into shape somehow before Luck comes round again; a hair-heeled draft who'll give more trouble than the horses; a camp next cold weather for a certainty; ourselves the first on the roster; the Russian shindy ready to come to a head at five minutes' notice, and you, the best of us all, backing out of it all! Think a little, Gaddy. You won't do it.

—Hang it, a man has some duties towards his family, I suppose.

—I remember a man, though, who told me, the night after Amdheran, when we were picketted under Jagai, and he'd left his sword—by the way, did you ever pay Ranken for that sword?—in an Utmanzai's head—that man told me that he'd stick by me and the Pinks as long as he lived. I don't blame him for not sticking by me—I'm not much of a man—but I do blame him for not sticking by the Pink Hussars.

(uneasily).—We were little more than boys then. Can't you see, Jack, how things stand? 'Tisn't as if we were serving for our bread. We've all of us, more or less, got the filthy lucre. I'm luckier than some, perhaps. There's no call for me to serve on.

—None in the world for you or for us, except the Regimental. If you don't choose to answer to that, of course

—Don't be too hard on a man. You know that a lot of us only take up the thing for a few years, and then go back to Town and catch on with the rest.

—Not lots, and they aren't some of Us.

—And then there are one's affairs at Home to be considered—my place and the rents, and all that. I don't suppose my father can last much longer, and that means the title, and so on.

—'Fraid you won't be entered in the Stud Book