“Well, what about seeing the sentimental blighter? Oh, of course he’s sentimental. His ‘double purpose’ reeks of it. Rather what before the war we used to call ‘colonial.’ What shall I do? Shall I tell him to come along?” “Why not? It can do no harm.” Godfrey reflected for a few moments. Then he said: “You see, before I met you I would have jumped at the idea of seeing an old friend of my father. But you knew more of him than the whole lot of the others put together. I’ve got my intimate picture of him through you. I’m not so keen to get sidelights, possibly distorting lights, from anybody else. You see what I mean, don’t you?” “I see,” said Marcelle. “Let us have a look at the foot.” She plied her nurse’s craft; set him up for the day’s mild activities. When he hobbled an hour later into the hall to attend to his correspondence and resume his study of the late Dr. Routh’s _Treatise on Rigid Dynamics_, he wrote a polite note to Mr. Burden suggesting an appointment. After all, even in such luxurious quarters as Churton Towers, life was a bit monotonous, and stragglers from the outer world not unwelcome. It was all very well for most of his comrades, who had mothers, fathers, sisters, cousins, girl friends attached and unattached to visit them; but he, Godfrey, had found himself singularly alone. Here and there a representative of the Woodcott crowd had paid him a perfunctory visit. He professed courteous appreciation. But they were not his people. Memories of his pariah boyhood discounted their gush over the one-footed hero with the Military Cross. He was cynical enough to recognize that they took a vast lot of the credit to themselves, to the Family. They went away puffed with pride and promises. He said to Marcelle: “I’m not taking any.” A few men friends, chiefly men on leave, wandered down from time to time. But they had the same old tales to tell; of conditions in the sector, of changes in the battalion, of such and such a scrap, of promotions and deaths, a depressing devil of a lot of deaths; the battalion wasn’t what it was when Godfrey left it; he could not imagine the weird creatures in Sam Browne belts that blew in from nowhere, to take command of platoons, things with their mother’s milk wet on their lips, and garters from the Burlington Arcade, their idea of devilry, in their pockets. And the N.C.O.s! My God! Oh, for the good old days of—six months ago! Godfrey, wise in his generation, laughed at the jeremiads of these callow _laudatores temporis acti_, and on probing further, satisfied himself that everything was still for the best in the best of all possible armies. He also found that ginger was still hot in the mouths of these friends of his, and that he had not lived until he had seen Betty or Kitty or Elsie So-and-So, or such and such a Revue.