Begumbagh | Page 5

all. If his head didn't ache before, it would
ache then; and I can see as plain now as if it was only this minute,
instead of years ago, her boxing Measles' ears, and threatening to turn
him out to another mess if he didn't keep sober. And she would have
turned him over too, only, as she said to Joe, and Joe told me, it might
have been the poor fellow's ruin, seeing how weak he was, and easily
led away. The long and short of it is, Mrs Bantem was a good motherly
woman of forty; and those who had anything to say against her, said it
out of jealousy, and all I have to say now is what I've said before: she
only had one fault, and that is, she never had any little Bantems to

make wives for honest soldiers to come; and wherever she is, my wish
is that she may live happy and venerable to a hundred.
That brings me to Measles. Bigley his name was; but he'd had the
small-pox very bad when a child, through not being vaccinated; and his
face was all picked out in holes, so round and smooth that you might
have stood peas in them all over his cheeks and forehead, and they
wouldn't have fallen off; so we called him Measles. If any of you say
"Why?" I don't know no more than I have said.
He was a sour-tempered sort of fellow was Measles, who listed because
his sweetheart laughed at him; not that he cared for her, but he didn't
like to be laughed at, so he listed out of spite, as he said, and that made
him spiteful. He was always grumbling about not getting his promotion,
and sneering at everything and everybody, and quarrelling with Harry
Lant, him, you know, as carried the elephant's trunk; while Harry was
never happy without he was teasing him, so that sometimes there was a
deal of hot water spilled in our mess.
And now I think I've only got to name three of the drum-boys, that Mrs
Bantem ruled like a rod of iron, though all for their good, and then I've
done.
Well, we had our breakfast, and thoroughly enjoyed it, sitting out there
in the shade. Measles grumbled about the water, just because it
happened to be better than usual; for sometimes we soldiers out there in
India used to drink water that was terrible lively before it had been
cooked in the kettle; for though water-insects out there can stand a deal
of heat, they couldn't stand a fire. Mrs Bantem was washing up the
things afterwards, and talking about dinner; Harry Lant was picking up
all the odds and ends, to carry off to the great elephant, standing just
then in the best bit of shade he could find, flapping his great ears about,
blinking his little pig's eyes, and turning his trunk and his tail into two
pendulums, swinging them backwards and forwards as regular as
clockwork, and all the time watching Harry, when Measles says all at
once, "Here come some lunatics!"

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER THREE.
Now, after what I've told you about Measles' listing for spite, you will
easily understand that the fact of his calling any one a lunatic did not
prove a want of common reason in the person spoken about; but what
he meant was, that the people coming up were half-mad for travelling
when the sun was so high, and had got so much power.
I looked up and saw, about a mile off, coming over the long straight
level plain, what seemed to be an elephant, and a man or two on
horseback; and before I had been looking above a minute, I saw
Captain Dyer cross over to the colonel's tent, and then point in the
direction of the coming elephant. The next minute, he crossed over to
where we were. "Seen Lieutenant Leigh?" he says in his quick way.
"No, sir; not since breakfast."
"Send him after me, if he comes in sight. Tell him Miss Ross and party
are yonder, and I've ridden on to meet them."
The next minute he had gone, taken a horse from a sycee, and in spite
of the heat, cantered off to meet the party with the elephant, the air
being that clear that I could see him go right up, turn his horse round,
and ride gently back by the side.
I did not see anything of the lieutenant and, to tell the truth, I forgot all
about him, for I was thinking about the party coming, for I had
somehow heard a little about Mrs Maine's sister coming out from the
old country to stay with her. If I recollect right, the black nurse told