Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/147

 To see these little chaps—there are two orderlies to each mess—polishing up the mugs and cutting up huge portions of bread and cheese in the swiftest and deftest manner is most entertaining. As soon as everything is ready the bugle sounds, and a small drummer stations himself by the door and beats a tattoo. Then, at the word, "fall in," the boys file in two abreast, after which there is another tattoo for attention, grace is said, and, at the final drum-beat, the hungry boys fall to.

The day of my visit happened to be the one day of the week when there is no meat provided. Instead, were enormous lumps of bread and cheese—which the boys unmistakably appreciated, and which they despatched with more activity than grace—followed by portions of hot plum-pudding, which one little lad condescendingly invited me to taste, remarking, "Here's a plummy bit!" I could not discern a single portion which was not overrun and overwhelmed with plums, but anyway it was excellent to the taste. As the boys get Van Houten's cocoa for breakfast, meat and pudding every day but Friday for dinner, and bread and jam and milk for supper, they are tolerably well off in the matter of diet. The mess-room is a big, cheerful room, with arms and lances ranged upon the upper part of the walls, beneath which, on red scrolls, are engraved the names of Waterloo, Balaclava, Tel-el-Kebir, and other historic battles in which heroes who were trained inside the walls of the Asylum have taken part. During dinner there is much clattering of tongues and laughing, and it certainly adds to the lads' enjoyment that their meal is not partaken in silence.

Dinner over, the rest of the boys go out for a short play, whilst the small orderlies don their blouses, take away the things, and proceed to wash and burnish brightly the mugs, pewter dishes, and meat-tins. Their energy rather surprises you, till you are told that prizes are given for the smartest mess-table, and when you are further told that the prizes are tarts and pies, you understand the strength of the incentive.

What, perhaps, strikes the observer as much as anything else is the curious and interesting two-sidedness presented by the lads. During parade, gun drill, and duty generally, they are little automatons. Their prompt obedience, their precision, their self-control and discipline, astonish you, and you begin to wonder whether anything of the original boy-nature remains; but see them ten minutes later in the grounds playing rounders or cricket, or, better still, scrambling and fighting at the tuck-shop for possession of "monster" sticks—which, by the bye, are all examined first by the resident medical officer—and your fears vanish.

The little tuck-shop, bearing upon its front the fascinating words, is in a recess of one of the corridors, and is presided over by a capable dame, the wife of the gymnasium master, who takes a great interest in