He has, owing to cookery, a little lost his figure,
but he never loses his friends. I have found a wing of his house
turned into a hospital for sick men, and there I once spent a
week in the company of two dismal nurses and a specialist in
"Sprue." Another time the place was full of schoolboys--sons of
Anglo-Indians whom the Infant had collected for the holidays, and
they nearly broke his keeper's heart.
But my last visit was better. The Infant called me up by wire,
and I fell into the arms of a friend of mine, Colonel A.L.
Corkran, so that the years departed from us, and we praised
Allah, who had not yet terminated the Delights, nor separated the
Companions.
Said Corkran, when he had explained how it felt to command a
native Infantry regiment on the border: "The Stricks are coming
for to-night-with their boy."
"I remember him. The little fellow I wrote a story about," I
said. "Is he in the Service?"
"No. Strick got him into the Centro-Euro-Africa Protectorate.
He's Assistant-Commissioner at Dupe--wherever that is.
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