one of the many things I admire about Marigold. He does not throw
my poor paralysed legs, so to speak, in my face. He accepts them
as the normal equipment of an employer. I don't know what I should
do without Marigold. ... You see we were old comrades in the South
African War, where we both got badly knocked to pieces. He was
Sergeant in my battery, and the same Boer shell did for both of
us. At times we join in cursing that shell heartily, but I am not
sure that we do not hold it in sneaking affection. It initiated us
into the brotherhood of death. Shortly afterwards when we had
crossed the border-line back into life, we exchanged, as tokens,
bits of the shrapnel which they had extracted from our respective
carcases. I have not enquired what he did with his bit; but I keep
mine in a certain locked drawer. ... There were only the two of us
left on the gun when we were knocked out. ... I should like to
tell you the whole story, but you wouldn't listen to me. And no
wonder. In comparison with the present world convulsion in which
the slaughtered are reckoned by millions, the Boer War seems a
trumpery affair of bows and arrows. I am a back-number. Still,
back-numbers have their feelings--and their memories.

I sometimes wonder, as I sit in this wheel-chair, with my
abominable legs dangling down helplessly, what Sergeant Marigold
thinks of me. I know what I think of Marigold. I think him the
ugliest devil that God ever created and further marred after
creating him. He is a long, bony creature like a knobbly ram-rod,
and his face is about the colour and shape of a damp, mildewed
walnut. To hide a bald head into which a silver plate has been
fixed, he wears a luxuriant curly brown wig, like those that used
to adorn waxen gentlemen in hair-dressing windows. His is one of
those unhappy moustaches that stick out straight and scanty like a