"She wouldn't enjoy my present abominable appearance as much as Phyllis," he replied, coolly. "You see, Phyllis is responsible for it. I told you she refused to marry me, didn't I, sir? After that, she called me a coward. I had to show her that I wasn't one. It was an awful nuisance, I admit, for I had intended to do something quite different. Oh! not Gedging or anything of that sort--but--" he dived beneath his sheepskin and brought out a tattered letter case and from a mass of greasy documents (shades of superior Oxford!) selected a dirty, ragged bit of newspaper--"but," said he, handing me the fragment, "I think I've succeeded. I don't suppose this caught your eye, but if you look closely into it, you'll see that 11003 Private R. Holmes, 1st Gordon Highlanders, a couple of months ago was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. I may be any kind of a fool or knave she likes to call me, but she can't call me a coward." I congratulated him with all my heart, which, after the first shock, was warming towards him rapidly. "But why," I asked, still somewhat bewildered, "didn't you apply for a commission? A year ago you could have got one easily. Why enlist? And the 1st Gordons--that's the regular army." He laughed and asked permission to help himself to a cigarette. "By George, that's good," he exclaimed after a few puffs. "That's good after months of Woodbines. I found I could stand everything except Tommy's cigarettes. Everything about me has got as hard as nails, except my palate for tobacco .... Why didn't I apply for a commission? Any fool could get a commission. It's different now. Men are picked and must have seen active service, and then they're sent off to cadet training corps. But last year I could have got one easily. And I might have been kicking my heels about England now." "Yet, at the sight of a Sam Browne belt, Phyllis would have surely recanted," said I. "I didn't want the girl I intended to marry and pass my life with to have her head turned by such trappings as a Sam Browne belt. She has had to be taught that she is going to marry a man. I'm not such a fool as you may have thought me, Major," he said, forgetful of his humble rank. "Suppose I had got a commission and married her. Suppose I had been kept at home and never gone out and never seen a shot fired, like heaps of other fellows, or suppose I had taken the line I had marked out--do you think we should have been assured a happy life? Not a bit of it. We might have been happy for twenty years. And then--women are women and can't help themselves--the old word--by George, sir, she spat it at me from a festering sore in her very soul--the old word would have rankled all the time, and some stupid quarrel having arisen, she would have spat it at me again. I wasn't taking any chances of that kind."