Lord Chickney was only slightly older than Lord Moggeridge, but he had not worn nearly so well. His hearing was not good, though he would never admit it, and the loss of several teeth greatly affected his articulation. One might generalize and say that neither physically nor mentally do soldiers wear so well as lawyers. The army ages men sooner than the law and philosophy; it exposes them more freely to germs, which undermine and destroy, and it shelters them more completely from thought, which stimulates and preserves. A lawyer must keep his law highly polished and up-to-date or he hears of it within a fortnight, a general never realizes he is out of training and behind the times until disaster is accomplished. Since the magnificent retreat from Bondy-Satina in eighty-seven and his five weeks defence of Barrowgast (with the subsequent operations) the abilities of Lord Chickney had never been exercised seriously at all. But there was a certain simplicity of manner and a tall drooping grizzled old-veteran picturesqueness about him that kept him distinguished; he was easy to recognize on public occasions on account of his long moustaches, and so he got pointed out when greater men were ignored. The autograph collectors adored him. Every morning he would spend half an hour writing autographs, and the habit was so strong in him that on Sundays, when there was no London post and autograph writing would have been wrong anyhow, he filled the time in copying out the epistle and gospel for the day. And he liked to be well in the foreground of public affairs—if possible wearing his decorations. After the autographs he would work, sometimes for hours, for various patriotic societies and more particularly for those which would impose compulsory training upon every man, woman and child in the country. He even belonged to a society for drilling the butchers’ ponies and training big dogs as scouts. He did not understand how a country could be happy unless every city was fortified and every citizen wore side-arms, and the slightest error in his dietary led to the most hideous nightmares of the Channel Tunnel or reduced estimates and a land enslaved. He wrote and toiled for these societies, but he could not speak for them on account of his teeth. For he had one peculiar weakness; he had faced death in many forms but he had never faced a dentist. The thought of dentists gave him just the same sick horror as the thought of invasion.