condition or not when received.

The dark French boy, Louis Deschamps, was a general favorite. So
much so, in fact that he could have had almost any job that it lay
in the sergeant-major's power to offer him. One day Louis casually
mentioned that he wished he could get nearer the engine work, and
the sergeant-major at once decided the boy should have his wish.

No finer fellow on the grounds could be found than the big Scot,
Macpherson, who was head engine hand of the first lot of mechanics
to arrive at the airdrome. Macpherson talked little unless he was
speaking to some prime favorite, when he became most voluble. The
sergeant-major and Mac were cronies. Consequently it took little
laying together of heads before the sergeant-major went before the
colonel one day and asked if Louis Deschamps could be spared from
headquarters to go and give Macpherson a hand as helper.

The colonel smiled. He knew what was in the wind. The Scot knew well
where he could obtain helpers in plenty if he needed them. But
Colonel Marker was as ready to help the Brighton boys as was the
sergeant-major, so he smilingly acquiesced, and the next morning Louis
came to camp attired in a suit of blue dungarees over his khaki.

In ten days' time Macpherson had taken the French lad to his heart,
and was never so happy as when working away with him over a refractory
engine and chatting along in a seemingly never-ending stream of
engine small-talk. All of which was meat and drink to Louis, and was
rapidly acquainting him with much that it would otherwise have taken
him years of experience to acquire.