Henry set to work with a will, and not only checked the number of spark plugs, which he found to be correct, but at the sergeant’s direction began placing them in neat piles on the shelf of the store-room that had been set aside for plugs of that type.  He was in the middle of this task when who should come by but the sergeant-major!

“Hello!” exclaimed that worthy, who was nothing if not a martinet, “who told you to be puttering about here?”

Before Fat could answer, the stores sergeant spoke up.  “This man is giving me a hand, and I need it,” he said.  “If you don’t need him for something else to-day I wish you would let him stay with me.  I am supposed to have a couple of soldiers detailed for this job, but I haven’t seen anything of them yet.  Why can’t I have this man?”

Fat seemed to grow bigger than ever round the chest as he heard himself referred to as “this man.”  That was getting on, sure enough.  More, he was mightily pleased that someone really wanted him.

“I guess you can have him if you want him,” answered the sergeant-major.  “Have you anything else to do to-day, Benson?”

“Not that I know about,” was Fat’s reply.

“Stay here, then, until the sergeant is through with you.”

That night the stores sergeant suggested that Fat come to him next day.  The stores were just starting, and the work of setting things in their proper places was far from uninteresting.  The boy took a real delight in his new task; and when, three days later, the sergeant-major called into the stores on his way past and said to the stores sergeant, “Are you going to keep Benson here for good?” the stores sergeant replied without hesitation, “I sure am.”

To have been among the stores from the time they were first unpacked, and to have assisted in the work of first placing them where they belonged, gave Fat a sort of sense of proprietorship.  Stores still poured in every day or so.  The two soldiers who were to help at last made their appearance, but neither of them seemed to particularly appeal to the stores sergeant, who was by that time depending more than he realized upon the quick intelligence and persistent application of his big-bodied boy assistant.

Fat’s prime chance came at the end of the first fortnight, when the stores sergeant was kept in bed for a few days from unusually severe after-effects of vaccination.  The pair of soldiers had not been in the new stores sufficiently long nor taken keen enough interest in them to be of much use except when working under direction.  So the real storekeeper was Fat for the interim.  The sergeant-major discovered the fact and reported it casually to Major Phelps, who spoke to the colonel about it.  Both of these officers had their hands very full at that time, and both of them had felt the blessing of having the ever-ready and ever-willing Brighton boys always on tap, as it were, to run quick errands and be eyes and feet for anyone that required an extra pair of either.