The Seed of Empire by Fred M. White

The long, sweating afternoon was drawing to a close, and gradually the patient yet light-hearted crowd in the quadrangle grew less. There had been all sorts and conditions of men there, from the gilded youth who came rolling up in his thousand-guinea car to the ragged nomad whose lips had tasted no food that day, and yet who was as willing and eager as the rest of them. It was strange to see young Oxford fraternising with Whitechapel, and exquisites of the city comparing notes with the man who yesterday had left the morning's milk in the area of their town houses. It seemed as if in one blast all social barriers had been blown away; it was as if a dozen streams had intermingled to make one vast sea of eager humanity. One by one the units passed in through those big doors, only to emerge a little later, openly exulting or correspondingly depressed. But these eager spirits formed the cream of the nation's manhood, and the tally of the rejected was pleasingly small. And as the crowd, dressed indifferently in purple and fine linen and greasy rags, grew smaller, so, almost imperceptibly, the khaki began to assert itself. In these very early stages of the war, there was no lack of uniforms and belts and side arms, and Harold Bentley's heart beat high as he surveyed the eager crowd. It came to his own turn presently to face the doctor, and a quarter of an hour later he was surveying himself in a long looking-glass, a soldier of the King and a defender of his country.

Outside in the quadrangle Kemp and the other two were awaiting him. There was a broad smile on the faces of them all, and an assumption of ease that deceived nobody. Up to them presently swaggered Ginger Smith. The little man was transformed almost out of knowledge. He carried himself proudly, for he was a born mimic and an actor of humorous parts, and he might have been a veteran by the way in which he wore his uniform.