"Eh!" queried Yorke brutally--rocking--"does hurt?"

"_If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep,
And all we--_"

"No! no! no! Yorkey!" George's voice rose to a cry, "not that! . . .
quit it, old man! . . . that's one of the most terrible things Kipling
ever wrote--terrible because it's so absolutely, utterly hopeless. . . ."

"Well, then!" said Yorke slowly--

"_Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?_"

"It wasn't beer," muttered Redmond absently, "it was whiskey. Slavic and
I drank it." With an effort he strove to arouse himself out of the
despondency that he himself had fallen into.

"Listen! . . . Oh! quit that d----d rocking, Yorkey! . . . Listen now!
we've put up a mighty good scrap against each other--we'll call that a
draw--let's put up another against our--well! we'll call it our rotten
luck . . . D----n it all, old man, we're not 'down an' outs' doing duty
in this outfit--the best military police corps in the world! . . . Let's
both of us quit squalling this eternal 'nobody loves me' stuff! This
isn't any slobbery brotherly love or New Jerusalem business, or anything
like that, either. I'm not a bloomin' missionary!" He qualified that
assertion unnecessarily to prove it. "But let's stick together and back
each other up--just us two and old man Slavin--make it a sort of 'rule of
three.' We can have a deuce of a good time on this detachment
then! . . ."