like that may be as rich as rich, but he would never marry a poor wife.'

'Thank God, I don't believe money will matter nearly as much to people,
after the war!' said Sarratt, with energy. 'It's astonishing how now, in
the army--of course it wasn't the same before the war--you forget it
entirely. Who cares whether a man's rich, or who's son he is? In my
batch when I went up to Aldershot there were men of all sorts,
stock-brokers, landowners, city men, manufacturers, solicitors, some of
them awfully rich, and then clerks, and schoolmasters, and lots of poor
devils, like myself. We didn't care a rap, except whether a man took to
his drill, or didn't; whether he was going to keep the Company back or
help it on. And it's just the same in the field. Nothing counts but what
you _are_--it doesn't matter a brass hap'orth what you have. And as the
new armies come along that'll be so more and more. It's "Duke's son and
Cook's son," everywhere, and all the time. If it was that in the South
African war, it's twenty times that now. This war is bringing the nation
together as nothing ever has done, or could do. War is hellish!--but
there's a deal to be said for it!'

He spoke with ardour, as they strolled homeward, along the darkening
shore, she hanging on his arm. Nelly said nothing. Her little face
showed very white in the gathering shadows. He went on.

'There was a Second Lieutenant in our battalion, an awfully handsome
boy--heir to a peerage I think. But he couldn't get a commission quick
enough to please him when the war broke out, so he just enlisted--oh! of
course they've given him a commission long ago. But his great friend was
a young miner, who spoke broad Northumberland, a jolly chap. And these
two stuck together--we used to call them the Heavenly Twins. And in the
fighting round Hill 60, the miner got wounded, and lay out between the