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"Yes, sir!" cried Dick, eagerly. "Beg pardon, sir, we are quite full," said the bandmaster, importantly. "Of what, Mr Wilkins?" said the colonel, sternly. "Incompetents? I am not much of a judge, sir, but I know enough music to be able to say that ours is one of the worst bands in the army.
"Would you please tell me," he asked, "whether you have decided to have a battle pretty soon?" "I don't decide such matters," said the bandmaster, laughing. "Why, I thought a general could always have a battle when he wanted to!" insisted the boy, surprised. "But I'm not a general, Billy," replied the young fellow, coloring. "Did you think I was?"
He looked round, twinkling, for a laugh to follow what he meant for a joke; and the obsequious bandsmen uttered a sniggering kind of concreted grin, followed instantly by a loud-toned sonorous Phoomp! from the huge bell-mouth of the contra-bass. "What do you mean by that, Banks?" cried the bandmaster, as soon as there was silence, for the men had burst into a loud and general roar.
Neither of us was quite sincere. Both were unconsciously pleased to hear the familiar strains. At an open-air fiesta in Barcelona some American friends who made their home there put the bandmaster up to breaking forth with the dear old melody as I came down the aisle, and I was mightily pleased.
Richard made jokes about the people who were sitting in the garden, also about the fat bandmaster who was always skipping about while he was conducting, and then about the trumpet-player whose cheeks bulged out and who seemed to be shedding tears when he blew into his instrument. Bertha could not help laughing very heartily.
With regard to the objection that the air "Tramp, tramp, the boys are marching" to which T.D. wrote the song is of American origin, I was under the impression that Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, the famous Irish-American bandmaster, was the composer of it, and that, therefore, we could claim the air of "God Save Ireland" as being Irish as well as the words.
"I never saw such a band as we were, down by the water's edge; and O'Hara, the bandmaster, took on and played the fool to such a tune, while we waited for the boat to take us aboard, that for the very love I bore him I had to knock him down and sit on him in a quiet corner.
"Billy," said the bandmaster abruptly, "when we charge, go up on that hill and watch us. If we don't come back, you must be ready to act a man's part. Your sister counts on you." They stood a moment there together, saying nothing. Presently some mounted officers on the hill wheeled their horses and came spurring toward the column drawn up along the road.
"What sort of characters have these boys?" he asked of the Regimental Sergeant-Major. "Accordin' to the Bandmaster, Sir," returned that revered official the only soul in the regiment whom the boys feared "they do everything but lie, Sir." "Is it like we'd go for that man for fun, Sir?" said Lew, pointing to the plaintiff.
The idea came to him unexpectedly, put into his head by the Commissioner of Customs at Tientsin, who wrote one day that he had among his subordinates the very man for a bandmaster. Pathetic derelict, a bandmaster without a band!
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