ou choose? Why, the
Queen, to be sure."

Everybody said "The Queen!" And there was such a thumping on the table
that all further discourse was prevented for several minutes. At last
everyone said it was good, and the sergeant had put it straight.

"Well, look'ee 'ere, lads--I was born among the poor and I don't owe
nothing to the upper classes, not even a grudge!"

"Hear! hear! Bravo, Mr. Sergeant!" cried all.

"Well, then; I've got on so far as well as I can, and I'm satisfied; but
I'll tell you what I believe our Queen to be--a thorough woman, and loves
her people, especially the poor, so much that d---d if I wouldn't die for
her any day--now what d'ye think o' that?"

Everybody thought he was a capital fellow.

"Look, here," he continued, "it isn't because she wears a gold crown, or
anything of that sort, nor because a word of her's could make me a field
marshal, or a duke, or anything o' that sort, nor because she's rich, but
I'll tell you why it is--and it's this--when we're fighting we don't
fight for her except as the Queen, and the Queen means the country."

"Hear! hear! hear! hear!"

"Well, we fight for the country--but she loves the soldiers as though
they were not the country's but her own flesh and blood, and comes to see
'em in the hospital like a mother, and talks to 'em the same as I do to
you, and comforts 'em, and prays for 'em, and acts like the real mother
of her people--that's why I'd die for her, and not because she's the
Queen of England only."

"Bravo!" said Joe. "Hope I shall soon see her in th' 'orsepittal. It be
out 'ere: beant it St. Thomas's."

"I hope you won't, my brave lad," said the sergeant; "but don't tell me
about republicanism when we've got such a good Queen; it's a shame and a
disgrace to mention it."

"So it be," said Joe; "I'm darned if I wouldn't knock a feller into the
middle o' next week as talked like thic. Hooroar for the Queen!"

"And now I'm going to say another thing," continued the sergeant, who
really waxed warm with his subject, and struck admiration into his
audience by his manner of delivery: may I say that to my mind he was even
eloquent, and ought to have been a sergeant-at-law, only that the country
would have been the loser by it: and the country, to my mind, has the
first right to the services of every citizen. "Just look," said the
sergeant, "at the kindness of that--what shall I call her? blessed!--yes,
blessed Princess of Wales! Was ther