That kind of man always
volunteers for some war or other; and what's funnier, he generally
isn't half bad at it. Lambert is distinctly good. The yellow West
Kensingtons I always reckoned the weakest part of the army; but he has
pulled them together uncommonly well, though he's subordinate to
Swindon, who's a donkey. In the attack from Pembridge Road the other
night he showed great pluck.'

"'He has shown greater pluck than that,' I said. 'He has criticised my
sense of humour. That was his first engagement.'

"This remark was, I am sorry to say, lost on the admirable commander
of the allied forces. We were in the act of climbing the last half of
Aubrey Road, which is so abrupt a slope that it looks like an
old-fashioned map leaning up against the wall. There are lines of
little trees, one above the other, as in the old-fashioned map.

"We reached the top of it, panting somewhat, and were just about to
turn the corner by a place called (in chivalrous anticipation of our
wars of sword and axe) Tower Crecy, when we were suddenly knocked in
the stomach (I can use no other term) by a horde of men hurled back
upon us. They wore the red uniform of Wayne; their halberds were
broken; their foreheads bleeding; but the mere impetus of their
retreat staggered us as we stood at the last ridge of the slope.

"'Good old Lambert!' yelled out suddenly the stolid Mr. Wilson of
Bayswater, in an uncontrollable excitement. 'Damned jolly old Lambert!
He's got there already! He's driving them back on us! Hurrah! hurrah!
Forward, the Green Guards!'

"We swung round the corner eastwards, Wilson running first,
brandishing the halberd--

"Will you pardon a little egotism? Every one likes a little egotism,
when it takes the form, as mine does in this case, of a disgraceful
confession. The thing is really a little interesting, because it shows
how the merely artistic habit has bitten into men like me. It was the
most intensely exciting occurrence that had ever come to me in my
life; and I was really intensely excited about it. And yet, as we
turned that corner, the first impression I had was of something that
had nothing to do with the fight at all. I was stricken from the sky
as by a thunderbolt, by the height of the Waterworks Tower on Campden
Hill. I don't know whether Londoners generally realise how high it
looks when one comes out, in this way, almost immediately under it.
For the second it seemed to me that at the foot of it even human