The subaltern with the eyeglass is a bad
route-marcher, and Wankin once remarked in an audible whisper that
the officer had learned his company drill with a drove of haltered
pack-horses, and the officer bears the name of "Pack-horse" ever
since.
On another occasion the major suffered when a battalion kit inspection
took place early one December morning. Wankin had sold his spare pair
of boots, the pair that is always kept on top of the kit-bag; but when
the major inspected Wankin's kit the boots were there, newly polished
and freed from the most microscopic speck of dust. Someone tittered
during the inspection, then another, and the major smelt a rat. He
lifted Wankin's kit-bag in his hand and found Wankin's feet tucked
under it--Wankin's feet in stockinged soles. The major was justly
indignant. "One step to the front, left turn," he roared. "March in
front of every rank in the battalion and see what you think of it!"
With stockinged feet, cold, but still wearing an inscrutable smile of
impudence, Wankin paraded in front of a thousand grinning faces and in
due course got back to his kit and beside the sarcastic major.
"What do you think of it?" asked the latter.
"I don't think much of it, sir," Wankin replied. "It's the dirtiest
regiment I ever inspected."
Wankin was sometimes unlucky; fortune refused to favour him when he
took up the work of picket on the road between St. Albans and London.
No unit of his regiment is supposed to go more than two miles
beyond St.
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