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For the present he must expect to be passed over. His chance would come later, when he had filled out a little and got rid of his cough. The winter dragged on: the weather was appalling: the grousers gave tongue with no uncertain voice, each streaming field-day. But Wee Pe'er enjoyed it all. He did not care if it snowed ink. He was a "sojer."
He declines an invitation to the Sergeants' Mess. "I hae a trial-trup the morn," he explains. "I must be steppin'. God keep ye all, brave lads!" The old gentleman sets off down the station road. The company falls in, and we march back to barracks, leaving Wee Pe'er the first name on our Roll of Honour alone in his glory beneath, the Hampshire pines.
Wee Pe'er blushed, his teeth momentarily ceased chattering, his heart swelled. Appearances to the contrary, he felt warm all through. The sergeant laid a fatherly hand upon his shoulder. "Go you your ways intil the guard-room, boy," he commanded, "and send oot Dunshie. He'll no hurt. Get close in ahint the stove, or you'll be for Cambridge!"
He made no bones about obeying orders and saluting officers acts of abasement which grated sorely at times upon his colleagues, who reverenced no one except themselves and their Union. He appeared to revel in muddy route-marches, and invariably provoked and led the choruses. The men called him "Wee Pe'er," and ultimately adopted him as a sort of company mascot.
There are simple-minded enthusiasts of the breed of Wee Pe'er, for whom the sheer joy of "sojering" still invests dull routine and hard work with a glamour of their own. There are the feckless and muddle-headed, making heavy weather of the simplest tasks.
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