“Oh! I know all the soldier stuff,” he admitted, “know my job, that is to say, all right, and of course I am moderately good at languages, but that finishes me. I haven’t any brains like your friend Thomson, for instance.” “Major Thomson is very clever, I believe,” she said a little coldly. “And a little censorious, I am afraid,” Granet added with a slight grimace. “I suppose he thinks I am a garrulous sort of ass but I really can’t see why he needed to go for your brother last night just because he was gratifying a very reasonable curiosity on my part. It isn’t as though I wasn’t in the Service. The Army and the Navy are the same thing, any way, and we are always glad to give a Navy man a hint as to how we are getting on.” “I really couldn’t quite understand Major Thomson myself,” she agreed. “May I ask--do you mind?” he began,--“have you been engaged to him long?” She looked away for a moment. Her tone, when she replied, was meant to convey some slight annoyance at the question. “About three months.” Captain Granet kicked a pebble away from the path in front of him with his sound foot. “I should think he must be a very good surgeon,” he remarked in a measured tone. “Looks as though he had lots of nerve, and that sort of thing. To tell you the truth, though, he rather frightens me. I don’t think that he has much sympathy with my type.” She became a little more indulgent and smiled faintly as she looked at him. “I wonder what your type is?” she asked reflectively. “Fairly obvious, I am afraid,” he confessed, with a sigh. “I love my soldiering, of course, and I am ashamed to think how keen I have been on games, and should be still if I had the chance. Outside that I don’t read much, I am not musical, and I am very much predisposed to let the future look after itself. There are thousands just like me,” he continued thoughtfully. “We don’t do any particular harm in the world but I don’t suppose we do much good.” “Don’t be silly,” she protested. “For one thing, it is splendid to be a capable soldier. You are just what the country wants to-day. But apart from that I am quite sure that you have brains.” “Have I?” he murmured. “Perhaps it’s the incentive I lack.”