The old Colonel is always rather suspicious of the great cocked-hats at head-quarters.  He knows that to maintain an air of activity they must still be changing something or abolishing something, and he is always afraid that they will change or abolish him.  But how could they change the old Colonel?  In a regiment he would be like Alice in Wonderland; on the Staff he would be like old wine in a new bottle.  They might make him a K.C.B., it is true; but he does not belong to the Simla Band of Hope, and stars must not be allowed to shoot madly from their sphere.  As to abolishing the old Colonel, this too presents its difficulties, for Sir Norman Henry and all the celebrated cocked-hats at home and abroad look upon the Indian Staff Corps as Pygmalion looked on his Venus.  They dote on its lifeless charms, and (figuratively) love to clasp it in their foolish arms. [Now the old Colonel is the trunk of this Frankenstein—­to change the scene.  So we must not abolish the old Colonel.]

It is better to dress him up in an old red coat, and strap him on to an old sword with a brass scabbard, that he may stand up on high ceremonials and drink the health of the good Queen for whom he has lived bravely through sunshine and stormy weather, in defiance of epidemics, retiring schemes and the Army Medical Department.  It is good to ask him to place his old knees under your hospitable board, and to fill him with wholesome wine, while he decants the mellow stories of an Anglo-India that is speedily dissolving from view.

The old Colonel has no harm in him; his scandal blows upon the grandmothers of people that have passed away, and his little improprieties are such as might illustrate a sermon of the present day. [A rabbit might play with him if there were no chutni lying about.]

But you must never speak to him as if his sun were setting.  He is as hopeful as a two-year-old.  Every Gazette thrills him with vague expectations and alarms.  If he found himself in orders for a Brigade he would be less surprised than anyone in the Army.  He never ceases to hope that something may turn up—­that something tangible may issue from the circumambient world of conjecture.  But nothing will ever turn up for our poor old Colonel till his poor old toes turn up to the daisies.  This change only, which we harshly call “Death,” will steal over his prospects; this new slide only will be slipped into the magic lantern of his existence, accompanied by funeral drums and slow marching.

Soon we shall hardly be able to decipher his name and age on the crumbling gravestone among the weeds of our horrible station cemetery—­but what matters it?

      “For his bones are dust,
      And his sword is rust,
      And his soul is with the saints, we trust.”

ALI BABA, K.C.B.

No.  XVI

THE CIVIL SURGEON

“Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it.”