He called the Canadian sergeant-major to him.
"See," he said, "that you keep the Railway Service Corps in camp with their arms ready, whatever their arms are. Tools, I suppose. Are their tools all complete? And their muster roll?"
"Girtin has gone absent, sir," the slim dark fellow said, with an air of destiny. Girtin was the respectable man with the mother to whom Tietjens had given the two hours" leave the night before.
Tietjens answered:
"He would have!" with a sour grin. It enhanced his views of strictly respectable humanity. They blackmailed you with lamentable and pathetic tales and then did the dirty on you. He said to the sergeant-major:
"You will be here for another week or ten days. See that you get your tents up all right and the men comfortable. I will inspect them as soon as I have taken my orderly room. Full marching order. Captain McKechnie will inspect their kits at two."
The sergeant-major, stiff but graceful, had something at the back of his mind. It came out:
"I have my marching orders for two-thirty this afternoon. The notice for inserting my commission in depot orders is on your table. I leave for the O.T.C. by the three train. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Your commission! . . ." It was a confounded nuisance.
The sergeant-major said:
"Sergeant-Major Cowley and I applied for our commissions three months ago. The communications granting them are both on your table together. . . ."
Tietjens said:
