When Miles had been rendered as fit to be seen by the populace of "The Windy City" as he would ever be, the two boys came smartly to attention, dressing right at close interval in the circle of firelight, to await inspection.
* * * * * * * * * *
Well now I know more about military inspection than I ever thought I would. I mean, I knew, vaguely, what it meant to stand at attention and could probably pull it off well enough for anybody who wasn't a huge dick Sergeant (I mean a mean jerk and not a Sergeant packing a large pistol). But I had no idea what "dressing right" and "close interval" were. But now I've read a bunch of military manuals! So now I know that dressing right is how one gets into the close interval formation. I take it Lindsay stood in the firelight and Miles then took up position next to Lindsay by either measuring with his arm or just estimating the distance to be stood at close interval. Interval is the length of an arm extended to touch the shoulder of the man next to you. Close interval is the distance to your elbow with your hand on your hip.
I think. I could have some of that wrong because I wasn't really super passionate about reading the military manual. The knowledge will be gone by lunch. Which is probably good because, as I've noted, I'm not even sure how correct it is!
I forgot to get an image of the boys' dress uniforms during the last line so thought I'd look it up now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Miles's dickey with the forty-four buttons is just one of those incomplete shirts you wear with a tuxedo because, I don't know, it was too expensive to make a full shirt when most of it would be hidden by the jacket anyway? I'm always happy to learn new Cockney rhyming slang so I was overjoyed to learn that the term "dickey" comes from rhyming slang for shirt. Those of you unfamiliar with Cockney rhyming slang might be wondering how "dickey" and "shirt" rhyme and if maybe Cockneys aren't just total morons. Well the way it usually works is that some Cockney takes a common name or phrase that has at least two words, the last word of which rhymes with the word the slang will replace, and then drops the actual rhyming word and just uses the first word as the rhyming slang. So "dicky dirt" (I have no idea what that means. I guess some Cockneys were just, "Oy! Take a guy's name and some other object in your vision and use that as rhyming slang! It's all dumb code anyway because you never know when you have to talk about a shirt secretly amid non-Cockneys!") rhymes with "shirt" and so a "shirt" became known as a "dicky."
Here's my favorite example of Cockney rhyming slang that you should skip if you don't like the word "cunt." "Berk" is rhyming slang for "cunt" based off the name of an old fox hunting club "Berkshire Hunt." Usually there isn't any connection between the word being replaced by the slang and the word/name/phrase used to come up with the slang but I'm willing to bet all those guys in the Berkshire Hunt organization were assholes.
My main understanding of Cockney rhyming slang is that Cockneys just have too much time on their hand and maybe are a bit paranoid of other people knowing all of their mundane business.
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