‘Sergeant Trent be blowed, sir,’ interrupted Bourne. ‘I don’t know anything about the two girls in the train, but the girl at the pub was your affair; only you didn’t want it known because your affections were ostensibly engaged in another part of the town. After all, Sergeant Trent was a good friend of mine, and I can’t …’

‘Have it your own way, then; it didn’t matter a damn anyway; because as soon as they heard Bourne had been standing us gin and bitters, and champagne, and liqueur brandy, they were all over him. One sat on one arm of his chair, and one on the other, and he fed them bits of peaches stuck on the end of a fork, treating them just as though they were a pair of pet dogs or two bloody parrots; and then he said in an absent-minded way that he didn’t want to break up the party, but the last train went at eight-thirty, and it was a quarter past already, so that there was just time for a stirrup-cup, as he called it, before we left. If any of you chaps go on the piss with Bourne, and he offers you a stirrup-cup, you can take it from me he has got you beat. He ordered brandy and soda for five, and that made the girls lively too, as they had had a few before they came in. And now, he says, we really must say good-bye. It was bloody easy to say good-bye, but Sergeant Trent tried to get up, and then he sat down again, laughing in a silly way: we were both just silly drunk, and there was Bourne as smart and quick as Sergeant Chorley on parade, except that his cap was off and one of the girls had ruffled his hair a bit. We heard the bloody engine whistle and the train go, and there we were, with ten or eleven bloody miles to walk back to Tregelly before rouse parade. Bourne was quite philosophic about it; said it would sober us all up, there was nothing like a good long walk to sweat it out of you, only we ought to allow plenty of time. Whenever I thought of it I got wind up, and then I’d pretend it was a joke and laugh like hell. Sergeant Trent was the same: we were both just silly drunk.