R. & O., with which he has painfully made himself familiar and which
he has diligently exercised himself to observe, but of one of those
seventeen hundred and sixty-nine "instructions" and "informations" which
from time to time have appeared in those sacred writings known as Army,
Divisional, Brigade, or Battalion Orders.
In consequence, an officer with a conscience toward his duty, or an
ambition for promotion, gives himself so completely to the business of
"watching his step" that only by a definite exercise of his altruistic
faculties can he indulge himself in the commendable civilian luxury of
caring for his neighbour.
And so it came about that Major Bayne, possessing in a large measure the
quality of "canniness" characteristic of his race--a quality which for
the benefit of the uninitiated Saxon it may be necessary to define as
being a judicious blending of shrewdness and caution,--and being
as well, again after the manner of his race, ambitious for his own
advancement, and, furthermore, being a man of conscience, had been so
entirely engrossed in the absorbing business of "watching his step" that
he had paid slight heed to the affairs of any other officer, and least
of all to those of the chaplain, whose functions in the battalion he had
regarded, it must be confessed, as more or less formal, if not merely
decorative.
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