s and dingy
canvas tents--and the old quiet streets were thick with unaccustomed
soldiery. The Dean called on the Colonel and officers, and soon the
house was full of eager young men holding the King's commission.
Doggie admired their patriotism, but disliked their whole-hearted
embodiment of the military spirit. They seemed to have no ideas beyond
their new trade. The way they clanked about in their great boots and
spurs got on his nerves. He dreaded also lest Peggy should be affected
by the meretricious attraction of a uniform. There were fine hefty
fellows among the visitors at the Deanery, on whom Peggy looked with
natural admiration. Doggie bitterly confided to Goliath that it was
the "glamour of brawn." It never entered his head during those early
days that all the brawn of all the manhood of the nation would be
needed. We had our well-organized Army and Navy, composed of
peculiarly constituted men whose duty it was to fight; just as we had
our well-organized National Church, also composed of peculiarly
constituted men whose duty it was to preach. He regarded himself as
remote from one as from the other.

Oliver, who had made a sort of peace with Doggie and remained at the
Deanery, very quickly grew restless.

One day, walking with Peggy and Marmaduke in the garden, he said: "I
wish I could get hold of that confounded fellow, Chipmunk!"

Partly through deference to the good Dean's delicately hinted distaste
for that upsetter of decorous households, and partly to allow his
follower to attend to his own domestic affairs, he had left Chipmunk
in London. Fifteen years ago Chipmunk had parted from a wife somewhere
in the neighbourhood of the East India Docks. Both being illiterate,
neither had since communicated with the other. As he had left her
earning good money in a factory, his fifteen years' separation had
been relieved from anxiety as to her material welfare. A prudent,
although a beer-loving man, he had amassed considerable savings, and
it was the dual motive of sharing these with his wife and of
protecting his patron from the ever-lurking perils of London, that had
brought him across the seas. When Oliver had set him free in town, he
was going in quest of his wife. But as he had forgotten the name of
the street near the East India Docks where his wife lived, and the
name of the factory in which she worked, the successful issue of the
quest, in Oliver's opinion, seemed problematical. The simple Chipmunk,
ho