"All right, we'll say the sixteenth. Why shouldn't _he_ have a horse? Of all the unjust--Well, you see what recriminations it would lead to. Now I don't say I'm more valuable than a platoon-commander or more effective on a horse, but, at any rate, there aren't sixteen of me. There's only one Signalling Officer, and if there _is_ a spare horse over--" "What about the Bombing Officer?" said O.C. Platoon 15 carelessly. I had quite forgotten the Bombing Officer. Of course he is a specialist too. "Yes, quite so, but if you would only think a little," I said, thinking hard all the time, "you would--well, put it this way. The range of a Mills bomb is about fifty yards; the range of a field telephone is several miles. Which of us is more likely to require a horse?" "_And_ the Sniping officer?" he went on dreamily. This annoyed me. "You don't shoot snipe from horseback," I said sharply. "You're mixing up shooting and hunting, my lad. And in any case there are reasons, special reasons, why I ride Toby--reasons of which you know nothing." Here are the reasons:-- 1. I think I have more claim to a horse called Toby than has a contributor to "Our Feathered Friends" or whatever paper the Sniping Officer writes for. 2. When I joined the Army, Celia was inconsolable. I begged her to keep a stiff upper lip, to which she replied that she could do it better if I promised not to keep a bristly one. I pointed out that the country wanted bristles; and though, between ourselves, we might regard it as a promising face spoilt for a tradition, still discipline was discipline. And so the bristles came, and remained until the happy day when the War Office, at the risk of losing the war, made them optional. Immediately they were uprooted. Now the Colonel has only one fault (I have been definitely promised my second star in 1927, so he won't think I am flattering him with a purpose): he likes moustaches. His own is admirable, and I have no wish for him to remove it, but I think he should be equally broad-minded about mine. "You aren't really more beautiful without it," he said. "A moustache suits you." "My wife doesn't think so," I said firmly. I had the War Office on my side, so I could afford to be firm. The Colonel looked at me, and then he looked out of the window, and made the following remarkable statement. "Toby," he said gently to himself, "doesn't like clean-shaven officers." This hadn't occurred to me; I let it sink in. "Of course," I said at last, "one must consider one's horse. I quite see that." "With a bicycle," he said, "it's different." And so there you have the second reason. If the Bombing Officer rode Toby, I should shave again to-morrow, and then where would the Battalion be? Ruined.