you and precious little for me. The Boche is done in all right ... What
you've got to do, my lad, is to sleep fourteen hours in the twenty-four
and spend half the rest catching trout. We'll have a shot at the grouse-
bird together this autumn and we'll get some of the old gang to join us.'

Someone put a tea-tray on the table beside us, and I looked up to
see the very prettiest girl I ever set eyes on. She seemed little more
than a child, and before the war would probably have still ranked
as a flapper. She wore the neat blue dress and apron of a V.A.D.
and her white cap was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled
demurely as she arranged the tea-things, and I thought I had never
seen eyes at once so merry and so grave. I stared after her as she
walked across the lawn, and I remember noticing that she moved
with the free grace of an athletic boy.

'Who on earth's that?' I asked Blaikie.

'That? Oh, one of the sisters,' he said listlessly. 'There are squads
of them. I can't tell one from another.'

Nothing gave me such an impression of my friend's sickness as
the fact that he should have no interest in something so fresh and
jolly as that girl. Presently my time was up and I had to go, and as I
looked back I saw him sunk in his chair again, his eyes fixed on
vacancy, and his hands gripping his knees.

The thought of him depressed me horribly. Here was I condemned
to some rotten buffoonery in inglorious safety, while the
salt of the earth like Blaikie was paying the ghastliest price. From
him my thoughts flew to old Peter Pienaar, and I sat down on a