If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file.  And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest.  ‘The Colonel’s son’ was idolised on his own merits entirely.  Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely.  His face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother’s almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion.  ‘I want my hair like Sergeant Tummil’s,’ said Wee Willie Winkie, and, his father abetting, the sacrifice was accomplished.

Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on Lieutenant Brandis—­henceforward to be called ‘Coppy’ for the sake of brevity—­Wee Willie Winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond his comprehension.

Coppy returned his liking with interest.  Coppy had let him wear for five rapturous minutes his own big sword—­just as tall as Wee Willie Winkie.  Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy; and Coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving.  Nay, more—­Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box, and a silver-handled ‘sputter-brush,’ as Wee Willie Winkie called it.  Decidedly, there was no one except his father, who could give or take away good-conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his breast.  Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the unmanly weakness of kissing—­vehemently kissing—­a ‘big girl,’ Miss Allardyce to wit?  In the course of a morning ride, Wee Willie Winkie had seen Coppy so doing, and, like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round and cantered back to his groom, lest the groom should also see.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to his father, but he felt instinctively that this was a matter on which Coppy ought first to be consulted.

‘Coppy,’ shouted Wee Willie Winkie, reining up outside that subaltern’s bungalow early one morning—­’I want to see you, Coppy!’

’Come in, young ‘un,’ returned Coppy, who was at early breakfast in the midst of his dogs.  ’What mischief have you been getting into now?’

Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing notoriously bad for three days, and so stood on a pinnacle of virtue.

‘I’ve been doing nothing bad,’ said he, curling himself into a long chair with a studious affectation of the Colonel’s languor after a hot parade.  He buried his freckled nose in a tea-cup and, with eyes staring roundly over the rim, asked:  ’I say, Coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls?’

‘By Jove!  You’re beginning early.  Who do you want to kiss?’

’No one.  My muvver’s always kissing me if I don’t stop her.  If it isn’t pwoper, how was you kissing Major Allardyce’s big girl last morning, by ve canal?’