It had been a
guest night, but the strangers had left, the lights had been turned
out in the billiard room overhead, the whist party had broken up,
and the players had rejoined three officers who had remained at
table smoking and talking quietly.
Outside, through the open French windows, the ground looked as if
sprinkled with snow beneath the white light of the full moon. Two
or three of the mess servants were squatting in the veranda, talking
in low voices. A sentry walked backwards and forwards by the gate
leading into the mess house compound; beyond, the maidan stretched
away flat and level to the low huts of the native lines on the
other side.
"So the Doctor comes back tomorrow, Major," the Adjutant, who had
been one of the whist party, said. "I shall be very glad to have
him back. In the first place, he is a capital fellow, and keeps
us all alive; secondly, he is a good deal better doctor than the
station surgeon who has been looking after the men since we have
been here; and lastly, if I had got anything the matter with me
myself, I would rather be in his hands than those of anyone else
I know."
"Yes, I agree with you, Prothero; the Doctor is as good a fellow as
ever stepped. There is no doubt about his talent in his profession;
and there are a good many of us who owed our lives to him when
we were down with cholera, in that bad attack three years ago. He
is good all round; he is just as keen a shikari as he was when he
joined the regiment, twenty years ago; he is a good billiard player,
and one of the best storytellers I ever came across; but his best
point is that he is such a thoroughly good fellow--always ready
to do a good turn to anyone, and to help a lame dog over a stile.
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