“To listen to you talking,” said Dalton, “anyone would think you were some kind of literary swell--Hall Caine and Wordsworth rolled into one, whereas we all know that the only thing you take an interest in is horses.” Captain Maitland was very far from being a literary swell or claiming any such title. The books he really liked, the only books he read when he had a free choice, were sporting stories with a strong racing and betting interest. But in camp in the wilderness no sporting stories were obtainable. The one novel which remained to the mess dealt with the sex problem, a subject originally profoundly uninteresting to Maitland, who had a healthy mind. He read it, however, as a remedy for insomnia. It proved effective. A couple of chapters sent him to sleep every night, so the book lasted a good while. Every morning at breakfast Maitland used to propound the problems raised by the chapters which he had read the night before. The mess got into the way of holding informal debates on the divorce laws. When he finished the book, Maitland declared that he intended to devote himself to Eugenics and the more enlightened kind of social reform as soon as the war was over. “I never thought of it before,” he said, “but I can see now that the future of the Empire really depends on the proper legislation for child welfare, on ante-natal clinic, and the abolition of the old empiric methods of marriage.” “Wait till after I’m married before you begin,” said Dalton. Haddingly was a little pained. He said things about the sanctity of marriage and the family as a divine institution. No one else took Maitland seriously. It was felt that when the war came to an end--if it ever did--he would go back to horse-racing and leave the scientific aspects of marriage in decent obscurity. When he had finished the novel he took the book on apple trees to bed with him. He became, after a short time, interested in that subject. He announced that when the war was over he intended to buy a small place in Devonshire and go in for orchards. “Apple growing,” he said, “is just exactly the peaceable, shady kind of life a man wants after being stuck down in a desert like this.” “With your taste for the turf,” said Dalton, “you’ll get into a shady kind of life all right, whether you plant apple trees or not.” Dalton was an irreverent boy. Haddingly was greatly pleased at the thought of Maitland sitting innocently under an apple tree. The turn of Mallory came next. Maitland left it for the last because the print was very small and the only light in his tent was a feeble candle. When he got fairly started in the book he became profoundly interested, and the other members of the mess were treated at breakfast time to a good deal of information about medieval warfare. “As far as I can make out,” Maitland said, “every officer in those days was knighted as soon as he got his commission.”