think
of it You can take it either way. I'll be interested to see how you do
take it. I was thinking of writing it to you, 'for your information and
necessary action, please.' My wife wanted me to, but it's too long for
a letter. Besides, I don't see what you or anyone else could possibly
do in the matter. You may give advice--that's what my wife expects of
you--but there's really no advice to give. However, you can tell me how
it strikes you. That's what I want to know, whether you agree with my
wife or with me. You know Simcox, don't you, or do you? I forget."

"Simcox?" I said. "Is that a tall, cadaverous man in the Wessex? Rather
mournful looking?"

"That's the man. Came home from a remote corner of the Argentine, or
somewhere like that, early in the war, and got a commission. He's a
captain now."

"I met him," I said, "down Albert way, shortly before the push last
year. I can't say I knew him. He seemed to me rather a difficult kind of
man to know."

"So my wife says," said Daintree. "He's older than most of us, for
one thing, and has spent twenty years all by himself herding sheep
or branding bullocks, or whatever it is they do out in those places.
Naturally he'd rather lost touch with life at home and found it
difficult to fit himself in; especially with a lot of boys straight
from the 'Varsities or school. They were mostly boys in his battalion.
Anyhow, he seems to have been a bit morose, but he did his job all right
in the regiment and was recommended for the M.C.. He got knocked out in
the Somme push and jolly nearly lost a leg. They saved it in the end and
sent him down to my place to convalesce."

Daintree owns a very nice place in the Midlands. In the old days it was
one of the pleasantest houses I know to stay in. Daintree himself was
a capital host and his wife is a charming woman. The house is a
convalescent home for officers now, and Mrs. Daintree, with the help of
three nurses, runs it. Daintree pretends to regard this as a grievance,
and says it was all his wife's doing, though he was just as keen on the
place as she was.

"Damned nuisance," he said, "finding the place full of boys rioting
when I get home on leave. And it's full up now--twelve of them, no
less. There's hardly a spot in the house I can call my own, and they've
spoiled the little lake I made at the bottom of the lawn. That young ass
Pat Singleton started what he called boat-races on it----"

"Oh, Pat Singleton's there?" I said.