ng our bit."

Perkins wrung his hand. "I wish to God," said he, "I was young enough--"

"By God! so do I!" said Sir Anthony.

This little conversation (which I afterwards verified) was reported to
me by my arch-gossip, Sergeant Marigold.

"And I tell you what, sir," said he after the conclusion, "I'm of the
same way of thinking and feeling."

"So am I."

"Besides, I'm not so old, sir. I'm only forty-two."

"The prime of life," said I.

"Then why won't they take me, sir?"

If there had been no age limit and no medical examination Marigold
would have re-enlisted as John Smith, on the outbreak of war, without a
moment's consideration of the position of his wife and myself. And Mrs.
Marigold, a soldier's wife of twenty years' standing, would have taken
it, just like myself, as a matter of course. But as he could not
re-enlist, he pestered the War Office (just as I did) and I pestered
for him to give him military employment. And all in vain.

"Why don't they take me, sir? When I see these fellows with three
stripes on their arms, and looking at them and wondering at them as if
they were struck three stripes by lightning, and calling themselves
Sergeants and swanking about and letting their men waddle up to their
gun like cows--and when I see them, as I've done with your eyes--watch
one of their men pass by an officer in the street without saluting, and
don't kick the blighter to--to--to barracks--it fairly makes me sick.
And I ask myself, sir, what I've done that I should be loafing here
instead of serving my country."

"You've somehow mislaid an eye and a hand and gone and got a tin head.
That's what you've done," said I. "And the War Office has a mark
against you as a damned careless fellow."

"Tin head or no tin head," he grumbled, "I could teach those mother's
darlings up there the difference between a battery of artillery and a
skittle-ally."

"I believe you've mentioned the matter to them already," I observed
softly.

Marigold met my eye for a second and then looked rather sheepish. I had
heard of a certain wordy battle between him and a Territorial Sergeant
whom he had set out to teach. Marigold encountered a cannonade of
blasphemous profanity, new, up-to-date, scientific, against which the
time-worn expletives in use during his service days were ineffectual.
He was routed with heavy loss.

"This is a war of the young," I continued. "New men, new guns, new
notions. Even a new language," I insinuate