'
When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general scramble for
Hill leave, and to his surprise and delight secured three months.
'As good a boy as I want,' said Revere the admiring skipper.
'The best of the batch,' said the Adjutant to the Colonel. 'Keep back
that young skrim-shanker Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit
up.'
So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of
gorgeous raiment.
''Son of Wick old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner,
dear,' said the aged men.
'What a nice boy!' said the matrons and the maids.
'First-class place, Simla. Oh, ri ipping!' said Bobby Wick, and
ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.
'We're in a bad way,' wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two
months. 'Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is
fairly rotten with it two hundred in hospital, about a hundred in
cells drinking to keep off fever and the Companies on parade
fifteen file strong at the outside. There's rather more sickness in
the out-villages than I care for, but then I'm so blistered with
prickly-heat that I'm ready to hang myself. What's the yarn about
your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not serious, I hope?
You're over-young to hang millstones round your neck, and the
Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you
attempt it.'
It was not the Colonel that brought Bobby out of Simla, but a
much-more-to-be-respected Commandant.
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