And then there was the other. Older by ten years than the boy--the same age as myself--Jerry Dixon was my greatest friend. We had fought together at school, played the ass together at Sandhurst, and entered the regiment on the same day. He had "A" company and I had "C," and the boy was one of his subalterns. Perhaps I am biassed, but to me Jerry Dixon had one of the finest characters I have ever seen in any man. He was no Galahad, no prig; he was just a man, a white man. He had that cheerily ugly face which is one of the greatest gifts a man can have, and he also had Pat as his fiancee, which was another. My name is immaterial, but everyone calls me Winkle, owing to---- Well, some day I may tell you. The regiment, our regiment, was the, let us call it the Downshires. We had come over from Aldershot and were week-ending at the Delawnays' place--they always took one on the river for Henley. At the moment Jerry was holding forth, quite unmoved by exhortations to "Get out and get under" bawled in his ears by blackened gentlemen of doubtful voice and undoubted inebriation. As I write, the peculiar--the almost sinister--nature of his conversation, in the light of future events, seems nothing short of diabolical. And yet at the time we were just three white-flannelled men and a girl with a great floppy hat lazing over tea in a punt. How the gods must have laughed! "My dear old Winkle"--he was lighting a cigarette as he spoke--"you don't realise the deeper side of soldiering at all. The subtle nuances (French, Pat, in case my accent is faulty) are completely lost upon you." I remember smiling to myself as I heard Jerry getting warmed up to his subject, and then my attention wandered, and I dozed off. I had heard it all before so often from the dear old boy. We always used to chaff him about it in the mess. I can see him now, after dinner, standing with his back to the ante-room fire, a whisky-and-soda in his hand and a dirty old pipe between his teeth. "It's all very well for you fellows to laugh," he would say, "but I'm right for all that. It is absolutely essential to think out beforehand what one would do in certain exceptional eventualities, so that when that eventuality does arise you won't waste any time, but will automatically do the right thing." And then the adjutant recalled in a still small voice how he first realised the orderly-room sergeant's baby was going to be sick in his arms at the regiment's Christmas-tree festivities, and, instead of throwing it on the floor, he had clung to it for that fatal second of indecision. As he admitted, it was certainly not one of the things he had thought out beforehand. He's gone, too, has old Bellairs the adjutant. I wonder how many fellows I'll know when I get back to them next week? But I'm wandering. "Winkle, wake up!" It was Pat speaking. "Jerry is being horribly serious, and I'm not at all certain it will be safe to marry him; he'll be experimenting on me."