I got muddled up among you somehow and said, `For the life of me I am not able to tell one of you from Adam!'" "Well ?" said Whipcord.
"Well, what!" said Doubleday, savagely "The joke ?" "Why, that _was_ the joke, you blockhead! But we can't expect a poor fellow like you to see it.

I say, the Field-Marshal's behind time.
I'll give him two minutes, and then we'll start without him." Just then there was a knock at the door, and two fellows entered.

One was a tall, thin, cadaverous-looking boy a little my senior, and the other--his exact contrast, a thick-set, burly youth, with a merry twinkle in his eye and a chronic grin on his lips.
"Late again, Field-Marshal," said Doubleday, clapping the cadaverous one on the back with a blow that nearly doubled him up.

"Is this your chum?
How are you, Patrick ?" The youth addressed as Patrick, but whose real name subsequently was announced as Daly, said he was "rightly," and that it was his fault the Field-Marshal was late, as he had to shave.
This announcement caused great amusement, for Master Daly was as innocent of a hair on his face as he was of being tattooed, and by the manner in which he joined in the laughter he seemed to be quite aware of the fact.
We sat down to supper in great good spirits.

I was perhaps the least cheerful, for all the others being friends, and I knowing only my two fellow-clerks, I felt rather out of it.