e and from a
mass of greasy documents (shades of superior Oxford!) selected a dirty,
ragged bit of newspaper--"but," said he, handing me the fragment, "I
think I've succeeded. I don't suppose this caught your eye, but if you
look closely into it, you'll see that 11003 Private R. Holmes, 1st
Gordon Highlanders, a couple of months ago was awarded the
Distinguished Conduct Medal. I may be any kind of a fool or knave she
likes to call me, but she can't call me a coward."

I congratulated him with all my heart, which, after the first shock,
was warming towards him rapidly.

"But why," I asked, still somewhat bewildered, "didn't you apply for a
commission? A year ago you could have got one easily. Why enlist? And
the 1st Gordons--that's the regular army."

He laughed and asked permission to help himself to a cigarette. "By
George, that's good," he exclaimed after a few puffs. "That's good
after months of Woodbines. I found I could stand everything except
Tommy's cigarettes. Everything about me has got as hard as nails,
except my palate for tobacco .... Why didn't I apply for a commission?
Any fool could get a commission. It's different now. Men are picked and
must have seen active service, and then they're sent off to cadet
training corps. But last year I could have got one easily. And I might
have been kicking my heels about England now."

"Yet, at the sight of a Sam Browne belt, Phyllis would have surely
recanted," said I.

"I didn't want the girl I intended to marry and pass my life with to
have her head turned by such trappings as a Sam Browne belt. She has
had to be taught that she is going to marry a man. I'm not such a fool
as you may have thought me, Major," he said, forgetful of his humble
rank. "Suppose I had got a commission and married her. Suppose I had
been kept at home and never gone out and never seen a shot fired, like
heaps of other fellows, or suppose I had taken the line I had marked
out--do you think we should have been assured a happy life? Not a bit
of it. We might have been happy for twenty years. And then--women are
women and can't help themselves--the old word--by George, sir, she spat
it at me from a festering sore in her very soul--the old word would
have rankled all the time, and some stupid quarrel having arisen, she
would have spat it at me again. I wasn't taking any chances of that
kind."

"My dear boy," said I, subridently, "you seem to be very wise." And he
did. So far as I knew anyth