what my
rank was. I said it all depended which of them he was referring to, since
there are three in all, the "Acting," the "Temporary" and the Rock-bottom
one. In any case, at heart I was and always should remain a plain civilian
mister. Should we leave it at that, and let bygones be bygones? He was
meditating his answer, when I asked him if he realised how close he was
standing to the edge of the quay, and when he turned round and looked I
also turned round and went....

The fellow who was standing next to me all this time was either too young
or too proud to conceal his stars beneath an ordinary waterproof. Blue-hat
didn't need to ask him what his rank was; he recognized at a glance just
the very type of officer he was looking for. So he led off the poor fellow
to the slaughter, and put him in charge of two hundred N.C.O.s and men
proceeding on leave to the U.K. I've no doubt the fellow spent the best
part of his days on the other side trying to get rid of his party. I have
not been two years in France without discovering that you simply cannot be
too careful when you are attempting to get out of it.

When I reached England my feelings with regard to myself changed. I was no
longer reticent about my rank. I displayed my uniform in a public
restaurant, without any reserve. In consequence they'd only let me eat
three-and-sixpence worth for my first meal. This time I was not so clever,
it appeared, as I thought. I had erroneously supposed that by not being a
civilian I should get more than two courses. As it was I got less, and so
it was with a full heart and an empty stomach that I fell in for home. If
I'd known I should have kept my waterproof on for luncheon.

Do you realise how dismal a thing it is for us to be separated from our own
by a High Sea all these months and years? It ain't fair, Sir, it simply
ain't fair. In my case there is not only a wife amongst wives, but also a
son amongst sons. Now, Charles, I am the very last person to call a thing
good merely because it is my own, nor am I that kind of fool who thinks all
his geese are swans. If my son had a fault I should be the very first to
notice and call attention to it. But he has not; dispassionately and from
an entirely detached and impersonal view, I am bound to say that there is
about him an outstanding merit which at once puts him on a different level
from all others. It isn't so much his four and a half teeth I'm thinking
of, nor is it the twenty-sev