"It never occurred to you, I suppose, a year ago," he continued, "that I spent most of my days in London working like a horse." "But," I cried--I felt myself flushing purple--and, when I flush purple, the unregenerate old soldier in me uses language of a corresponding hue--"But," I cried--and in this language I asked him why he had told me nothing about it.
"The essence of the Secret Service, sir," replied this maddening young man, "is--well--secrecy." "You had a billet offered to you, of the kind you describe ?" "The offer reached me, very much belated, one day when I was half dead, after having performed some humiliating fatigue duty.

I think I had persisted in trying to scratch an itching back on parade.

Military discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't take into account the sensitiveness of a recruit's back.

It flatly denies such a phenomenon.
Now I think I can defy anything in God's quaint universe to make me itch.

But that's by the way.