The first thing that brought the seriousness of the war home to Doggie was a letter from John Fox. John Fox, a major in a Territorial regiment, was mobilized. He regretted that he could not give his personal attention to the proposed alterations at Denby Hall. Should the plans be proceeded with in his absence from the office, or would Mr. Trevor care to wait till the end of the war, which, from the nature of things, could not last very long? Doggie trotted off to Peggy. She was greatly annoyed.

“What awful rot!” she cried. “Fox, a major of artillery! I’d just as soon trust you with a gun. Why doesn’t he stick to his architecture?”

“He’d be shot or something if he refused to go,” said Doggie. “But why can’t we turn it over to Sir Owen Julius?”

“That old archæological fossil?”

Peggy, womanlike, forgot that they had approached him in the first place.

“He’d never begin to understand what we want. Fox hinted as much. Now Fox is modern and up to date and sympathetic. If I can’t have Fox, I won’t have Sir Owen. Why, he’s older than Dad! He’s decrepit. Can’t we get another architect?”

“Do you think, dear,” said Doggie, “that, in the circumstances, it would be a nice thing to do?”

She flashed a glance at him. She had woven no young girl’s romantic illusions around Marmaduke. Should necessity have arisen, she could have furnished you with a merciless analysis of his character. But in that analysis she would have frankly included a very fine sense of honour. If he said a thing wasn’t quite nice – well, it wasn’t quite nice.

“I suppose it wouldn’t,” she admitted. “We shall have to wait. But it’s a rotten nuisance all the same.”

Hundreds of thousands of not very intelligent, but at the same time by no means unpatriotic, people, like Peggy, at the beginning of the war thought trivial disappointments rotten nuisances. We had all waxed too fat during the opening years of the twentieth century, and, not having a spiritual ideal in God’s universe, we were in danger of perishing from Fatty Degeneration of the Soul. As it was, it took a year or more of war to cure us.

It took Peggy quite a month to appreciate the meaning of the mobilization of Major Fox, R.F.A. A brigade of Territorial artillery flowed over Durdlebury, and the sacred and sleepy meadows became a mass of guns and horse-lines and men in khaki, and waggons and dingy canvas tents – and the old quiet streets were thick with unaccustomed soldiery. The Dean called on the Colonel and officers, and soon the house was full of eager young men holding the King’s commission. Doggie admired their patriotism, but disliked their whole-hearted embodiment of the military spirit. They seemed to have no ideas beyond their new trade. The way they clanked about in their great boots and spurs got on his nerves. He dreaded also lest Peggy should be affected by the meretricious attraction of a uniform. There were fine hefty fellows among the visitors at the Deanery, on whom Peggy looked with natural admiration. Doggie bitterly confided to Goliath that it was the “glamour of brawn.” It never entered his head during those early days that all the brawn of all the manhood of the nation would be needed. We had our well-organized Army and Navy, composed of peculiarly constituted men whose duty it was to fight; just as we had our well-organized National Church, also composed of peculiarly constituted men whose duty it was to preach. He regarded himself as remote from one as from the other.

Oliver, who had made a sort of peace with Doggie and remained at the Deanery, very quickly grew restless.

One day, walking with Peggy and Marmaduke in the garden, he said: “I wish I could get hold of that confounded fellow, Chipmunk!”

Partly through deference to the good Dean’s delicately hinted distaste for that upsetter of decorous households, and partly to allow his follower to attend to his own domestic affairs, he had left Chipmunk in London. Fifteen years ago Chipmunk had parted from a wife somewhere in the neighbourhood of the East India Docks. Both being illiterate, neither had since communicated with the other. As he had left her earning good money in a factory, his fifteen years’ separation had been relieved from anxiety as to her material welfare. A prudent, although a beer-loving man, he had amassed considerable savings, and it was the dual motive of sharing these with his wife and of protecting his patron from the ever-lurking perils of London, that had brought him across the seas. When Oliver had set him free in town, he was going in quest of his wife. But as he had forgotten the name of the street near the East India Docks where his wife lived, and the name of the factory in which she worked, the successful issue of the quest, in Oliver’s opinion, seemed problematical. The simple Chipmunk, however, was quite sanguine. He would run into her all right. As soon as he had found her he would let the Captain know. Up to the present he had not communicated with the Captain. He could give the Captain no definite address, so the Captain could not communicate with him. Chipmunk had disappeared into the unknown.

“Isn’t he quite capable of taking care of himself?” asked Peggy.

“I’m not so sure,” replied Oliver. “Besides, he’s hanging me up. I’m kind of responsible for him, and I’ve got sixty pounds of his money. It’s all I could do to persuade him not to stow the lot in his pocket, so as to divide it with Mrs. Chipmunk as soon as he saw her. I must find out what has become of the beggar before I move.”

“I suppose,” said Doggie, “you’re anxious now to get back to the South Seas?”

Oliver stared at him. “No, sonny, not till the war’s over.”

“Why, you wouldn’t be in any great danger out there, would you?”

Oliver laughed. “You’re the funniest duck that ever was, Doggie. I’ll never get to the end of you.” And he strolled away.

“What does he mean?” asked the bewildered Doggie.

“I think,” replied Peggy, smiling, “that he means he’s going to fight.”

“Oh,” said Doggie. Then after a pause he added, “He’s just the sort of chap for a soldier, isn’t he?”

The next day Oliver’s anxiety as to Chipmunk was relieved by the appearance of the man himself, incredibly dirty and dusty and thirsty. Having found no trace of his wife, and having been robbed of the money he carried about him, he had tramped to Durdlebury, where he reported himself to his master as if nothing out of the way had happened.

“You silly blighter,” said Oliver. “Suppose I had let you go with your other sixty pounds, you would have been pretty well in the soup, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, Cap’en,” said Chipmunk.

“And you’re not going on any blethering idiot wild-goose chases after wives and such-like truck again, are you?”

“No, Cap’en,” said Chipmunk.

This was in the stable-yard, after Chipmunk had shaken some of the dust out of his hair and clothes and had eaten and drunk voraciously. He was now sitting on an upturned bucket and smoking his clay pipe with an air of solid content. Oliver, lean and supple, his hands in his pockets, looked humorously down upon him.

“And you’ve got to stick to me for the future, like a roseate leech.”

“Yes, Cap’en.”

“You’re going to ride a horse.”

“A wot?” roared Chipmunk.

“A thing on four legs, that kicks like hell.”

“Wotever for? I ain’t never ridden no ’osses.”

“You’re going to learn, you unmilitary-looking, worm-eaten scab. You’ve got to be a ruddy soldier.”

“Gorblime!” said Chipmunk, “that’s the first I ’eard of it. A ’oss soldier? You’re not kiddin’, are you, Cap’en?”

“Certainly not.”

“Gorblime! Who would ha’ thought it?” Then he spat lustily and sucked at his pipe.

“You’ve nothing to say against it, have you?”

“No, Cap’en.”

“All right. And look here, when we’re in the army you must chuck calling me Cap’en.”

“What shall I have to call yer? Gineral?” Chipmunk asked simply.

“Mate, Bill, Joe – any old name.”

“Ker-ist!” said Chipmunk.

“Do you know why we’re going to enlist?”

“Can’t say as ’ow I does, Cap’en.”

“You chuckle-headed swab! Don’t you know we’re at war?”

“I did ’ear some talk about it in a pub one night,” Chipmunk admitted. “’Oo are we fighting? Dutchmen or Dagoes?”

“Dutchmen.”

Chipmunk spat in his horny hands, rubbed them together and smiled. As each individual hair on his face seemed to enter into the smile, the result was sinister.

“Do you remember that Dutchman at Samoa, Cap’en?”

Oliver smiled back. He remembered the hulking, truculent German merchant whom Chipmunk, having half strangled, threw into the sea. He also remembered the amount of accomplished lying he had to practise in order to save Chipmunk from the clutches of the law and get away with the schooner.

“We leave here to-morrow,” said Oliver. “In the meanwhile you’ll have to shave your ugly face.”

For the first time Chipmunk was really staggered. He gaped at Oliver’s retiring figure. Even his limited and time-worn vocabulary failed him. The desperate meaning of the war has flashed suddenly on millions of men in millions of different ways. This is the way in which it flashed on Chipmunk.

He sat on his bucket pondering over the awfulness of it and sucking his pipe long after it had been smoked out. The Dean’s car drove into the yard and the chauffeur, stripping off his coat, prepared to clean it down.

“Say, guv’nor,” said Chipmunk hoarsely, “what do you think of this ’ere war?”

“Same as most people,” replied the chauffeur tersely. He shared in the general disapproval of Chipmunk.

“But see ’ere. Cap’en he tells me I must shave me face and be a ’oss soldier. I never shaved me face in me life, and I dunno ’ow to do it, just as I dunno ’ow to ride a ’oss. I’m a sailorman, I am, and sailormen don’t shave their faces and ride ’osses. That’s why I arsked yer what yer thought of this ’ere war.”

The chauffeur struggled into his jeans and adjusted them before replying.

“If you’re a sailor, the place for you is the navy,” he remarked in a superior manner. “As for the cavalry, the Cap’en, as you call him, ought to have more sense – ”

Chipmunk rose and swung his long arms threateningly.

“Look ’ere, young feller, do you want to have your blinkin’ ’ead knocked orf? Where the Cap’en goes, I goes, and don’t you make any mistake about it!”

“I didn’t say anything,” the chauffeur expostulated.

“Then don’t say it. See? Keep your blinkin’ ’ead shut and mind your own business.”

And, scowling fiercely and thrusting his empty pipe into his trousers pocket, Chipmunk rolled away.

A few hours later Oliver, entering his room to dress for dinner, found him standing in the light of the window laboriously fitting studs into a shirt. The devoted fellow having gone to report to his master, had found Burford engaged in his accustomed task of laying out his master’s evening clothes – Oliver during his stay in London had provided himself with these necessaries. A jealous snarl had sent Burford flying. So intent was he on his work, that he did not hear Oliver enter. Oliver stood and watched him. Chipmunk was swearing wholesomely under his breath. Oliver saw him take up the tail of the shirt, spit on it and begin to rub something.

“Ker-ist!” said Chipmunk.

“What in the thundering blazes are you doing there?” cried Oliver.

Chipmunk turned.

“Oh, my God!” said Oliver.

Then he sank on a chair and laughed and laughed, and the more he looked at Chipmunk the more he laughed. And Chipmunk stood stolid, holding the shirt of the awful, wet, thumb-marked front. But it was not at the shirt that Oliver laughed.

“Good God!” he cried, “were you born like that?”

For Chipmunk, having gone to the barber’s, was clean-shaven, and revealed himself as one of the most comically ugly of the sons of men.

“Never mind,” said Oliver, after a while, “you’ve made the sacrifice for your country.”

“And wot if I get the face-ache?”

“I’d get something that looked like a face before I’d talk of it,” grinned Oliver.

At the family dinner-table, Doggie being present, he announced his intentions. It was the duty of every able-bodied man to fight for the Empire. Had not half a million just been called for? We should want a jolly sight more than that before we got through with it. Anyway, he was off to-morrow.

“To-morrow?” echoed the Dean.

Burford, who was handing him potatoes, arched his eyebrows in alarm. He was fond of Oliver.

“With Chipmunk.”

Burford uttered an unheard sigh of relief.

“We’re going to enlist in King Edward’s Horse. They’re our kind. Overseas men. Lots of ’em what you dear good people would call bad eggs. There you make the mistake. Perhaps they mayn’t be fresh enough raw for a dainty palate – but for cooking, good hard cooking, by gosh! nothing can touch ’em.”

“You talk of enlisting, dear,” said Mrs. Conover. “Does that mean as a private soldier?”

“Yes – a trooper. Why not?”

“You’re a gentleman, dear. And gentlemen in the Army are officers.”

“Not now, my dear Sophia,” said the Dean. “Gentlemen are crowding into the ranks. They are setting a noble example.”

They argued it out in their gentle old-fashioned way. The Dean quoted examples of sons of family who had served as privates in the South African War.

“And that to this,” said he, “is but an eddy to a maelstrom.”

“Come and join us, James Marmaduke,” said Oliver across the table. “Chipmunk and me. Three ‘sworn brothers to France.’”

Doggie smiled easily. “I’m afraid I can’t undertake to swear a fraternal affection for Chipmunk. He and I would have neither habits nor ideals in common.”

Oliver turned to Peggy. “I wish,” said he, with rare restraint, “he wouldn’t talk like a book on deportment.”

“Marmaduke talks the language of civilization,” laughed Peggy. “He’s not a savage like you.”

“Don’t you jolly well wish he was!” said Oliver.

Peggy flushed. “No, I don’t!” she declared.

The Dean being called away on business immediately after dinner, the young men were left alone in the dining-room when the ladies had departed. Oliver poured himself out a glass of port and filled his pipe – an inelegant proceeding of which Doggie disapproved. A pipe alone was barbaric, a pipe with old port was criminal. He held his peace however.

“James Marmaduke,” said Oliver, after a while, “what are you going to do?” Much as Marmaduke disliked the name of “Doggie,” he winced under the irony of the new appellation.

“I don’t see that I’m called upon to do anything,” he replied.

Oliver smoked and sipped his port. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings any more,” said he gravely, “though sometimes I’d like to scrag you – I suppose because you’re so different from me. It was so when we were children together. Now I’ve grown very fond of Peggy. Put on the right track, she might turn into a very fine woman.”

“I don’t think we need discuss Peggy, Oliver,” said Marmaduke.

“I do. She is sticking to you very loyally.” Oliver was a bit of an idealist. “The time may come when she’ll be up the devil’s own tree. She’ll develop a patriotic conscience. If she sticks to you while you do nothing she’ll be miserable. If she chucks you, as she probably will, she’ll be no happier. It’s all up to you, James Doggie Marmaduke, old son. You’ll have to gird up your loins and take sword and buckler and march away like the rest. I don’t want Peggy to be unhappy. I want her to marry a man. That’s why I proposed to take you out with me to Huaheine and try to make you one. But that’s over. Now, here’s the real chance. Better take it sooner than later. You’ll have to be a soldier, Doggie.”

His pipe not drawing, he was preparing to dig it with the point of a dessert-knife, when Doggie interposed hurriedly.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t do that! It makes cold shivers run down my back!”

Oliver looked at him oddly, put the extinct pipe in his dinner-jacket pocket and rose.

“A flaw in the dainty and divine ordering of things makes you shiver now, old Doggie. What will you do when you see a fellow digging out another fellow’s intestines with the point of a bayonet? A bigger flaw there somehow!”

“Don’t talk like that. You make me sick,” said Doggie.

CHAPTER VI

During the next few months there happened terrible and marvellous things, which are all set down in the myriad chronicles of the time; which shook the world and brought the unknown phenomenon of change into the Close of Durdlebury. Folks of strange habit and speech walked in it, and, gazing at the Gothic splendour of the place, saw through the mist of autumn and the mist of tears not Durdlebury but Louvain. More than one of those grey houses flanking the cathedral and sharing with it the continuity of its venerable life, was a house of mourning; not for loss in the inevitable and not unkindly way of human destiny as understood and accepted with long disciplined resignation – but for loss sudden, awful, devastating; for the gallant lad who had left it but a few weeks before, with a smile on his lips, and a new and dancing light of manhood in his eyes, now with those eyes unclosed and glazed staring at the pitiless Flanders sky. Not one of those houses but was linked with a battlefield. Beyond the memory of man the reader of the Litany had droned the accustomed invocation on behalf of the Sovereign and the Royal Family, the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, the Lords of the Council and all prisoners and captives, and the congregation had lumped them all together in their responses with an undifferentiating convention of fervour. What had prisoners and captives, any more than the Lords of the Council, to do with their lives, their hearts, their personal emotions? But now – Durdlebury men were known to be prisoners in German hands, and after “all prisoners and captives” there was a long and pregnant silence, in which was felt the reverberation of war against pier and vaulted arch and groined roof of the cathedral, which was broken too, now and then, by the stifled sob of a woman, before the choir came in with the response so new and significant in its appeal – “We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord!”

And in every home the knitting-needles of women clicked, as they did throughout the length and breadth of the land. And the young men left shop and trade and counting-house. And young parsons fretted, and some obtained the Bishop’s permission to become Army chaplains, and others, snapping their fingers (figuratively) under the Bishop’s nose, threw their cassocks to the nettles and put on the full (though in modern times not very splendiferous) panoply of war. And in course of time the brigade of artillery rolled away and new troops took their place; and Marmaduke Trevor, Esquire, of Denby Hall, was called upon to billet a couple of officers and twenty men.

Doggie was both patriotic and polite. Having a fragment of the British Army in his house, he did his best to make them comfortable. By January he had no doubt that the Empire was in peril, that it was every man’s duty to do his bit. He welcomed the new-comers with open arms, having unconsciously abandoned his attitude of superiority over mere brawn. Doggie saw the necessity of brawn. The more the better. It was every patriotic Englishman’s duty to encourage brawn. If the two officers had allowed him, he would have fed his billeted men every two hours on prime beefsteaks and burgundy. He threw himself heart and soul into the reorganization of his household. Officers and men found themselves in clover. The officers had champagne every night for dinner. They thought Doggie a capital fellow.

“My dear chap,” they would say, “you’re spoiling us. I don’t say we don’t like it and aren’t grateful. We jolly well are. But we’re supposed to rough it – to lead the simple life – what? You’re doing us too well.”

“Impossible!” Doggie would reply, filling up the speaker’s glass. “Don’t I know what we owe to you fellows? In what other way can a helpless, delicate crock like myself show his gratitude and in some sort of little way serve his country?”

When the sympathetic and wine-filled guest would ask what was the nature of his malady, he would tap his chest vaguely and reply:

“Constitutional. I’ve never been able to do things like other fellows. The least thing bowls me out.”

“Dam hard lines – especially just now.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Doggie would answer. And once he found himself adding, “I’m fed up with doing nothing.”

Here can be noted a distinct stage in Doggie’s development. He realized the brutality of fact. When great German guns were yawning open-mouthed at you, it was no use saying, “Take the nasty, horrid things away, I don’t like them.” They wouldn’t go unless you took other big guns and fired at them. And more guns were required than could be manned by the peculiarly constituted fellows who made up the artillery of the original British Army. New fellows not at all warlike, peaceful citizens who had never killed a cat in anger, were being driven by patriotism and by conscience to man them. Against Blood and Iron now supreme, the superior, æsthetic and artistic being was of no avail. You might lament the fall in relative values of collections of wall-papers and little china dogs, as much as you liked; but you could not deny the fall; they had gone down with something of an ignoble “wallop.” Doggie began to set a high value on guns and rifles and such-like deadly engines, and to inquire petulantly why the Government were not providing them at greater numbers and at greater speed. On his periodic visits to London he wandered round by Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, to see for himself how the recruiting was going on. At the Deanery he joined in ardent discussions of the campaign in Flanders. On the walls of his peacock and ivory room were maps stuck all over with little pins. When he told the young officer that he was wearied of inaction, he spoke the truth. He began to feel mightily aggrieved against Providence for keeping him outside this tremendous national league of youth. He never questioned his physical incapacity. It was as real a fact as the German guns. He went about pitying himself and seeking pity.

The months passed. The regiment moved away from Durdlebury, and Doggie was left alone in Denby Hall.

He felt solitary and restless. News came from Oliver that he had been offered and had accepted an infantry commission, and that Chipmunk, having none of the special qualities of a “’oss soldier,” had, by certain skilful wire-pullings, been transferred to his regiment, and had once more become his devoted servant. “A month of this sort of thing,” he wrote, “would make our dear old Doggie sit up.” Doggie sighed. If only he had been blessed with Oliver’s constitution!

One morning Briggins, his chauffeur, announced that he could stick it no longer and was going to join up. Then Doggie remembered a talk he had had with one of the young officers who had expressed astonishment at his not being able to drive a car. “I shouldn’t have the nerve,” he had replied. “My nerves are all wrong – and I shouldn’t have the strength to change tyres and things.”… If his chauffeur went, he would find it very difficult to get another. Who would drive the Rolls-Royce?

“Why not learn to drive yourself, sir?” said Briggins. “Not the Rolls-Royce. I would put it up or get rid of it, if I were you. If you engage a second-rate man, as you’ll have to, who isn’t used to this make of car, he’ll do it in for you pretty quick. Get a smaller one in its place and drive it yourself. I’ll undertake to teach you enough before I go.”

So Doggie, following Briggins’ advice, took lessons and, to his amazement, found that he did not die of nervous collapse when a dog crossed the road in front of the car and that the fitting of detachable wheels did not require the strength of a Hercules. The first time he took Peggy out in the two-seater he swelled with pride.

“I’m so glad to see you can do something!” she said.

Although she was kind and as mildly affectionate as ever, he had noticed of late a curious reserve in her manner. Conversation did not flow easily. There seemed to be something at the back of her mind. She had fits of abstraction from which, when rallied, she roused herself with an effort.

“It’s the war,” she would declare. “It’s affecting everybody that way.”

Gradually Doggie began to realize that she spoke truly. Most people of his acquaintance, when he was by, seemed to be thus afflicted. The lack of interest they manifested in his delicacy of constitution was almost impolite. At last he received an anonymous letter, “For little Doggie Trevor, from the girls of Durdlebury,” enclosing a white feather.

The cruelty of it broke Doggie down. He sat in his peacock and ivory room and nearly wept. Then he plucked up courage and went to Peggy. She was rather white about the lips as she listened.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I expected something of the sort to happen.”

“It’s brutal and unjust.”

“Yes, it’s brutal,” she admitted coldly.

“I thought you, at any rate, would sympathize with me,” he cried.

She turned on him. “And what about me? Who sympathizes with me? Do you ever give a moment’s thought to what I’ve had to go through the last few months?”

“I don’t quite know what you mean,” he stammered.

“I should have thought it was obvious. You can’t be such an innocent babe as to suppose people don’t talk about you. They don’t talk to you because they don’t like to be rude. They send you white feathers instead. But they talk to me. ‘Why isn’t Marmaduke in khaki?’ ‘Why isn’t Doggie fighting?’ ‘I wonder how you can allow him to slack about like that!’ – I’ve had a pretty rough time fighting your battles, I can tell you, and I deserve some credit. I want sympathy just as much as you do.”

“My dear,” said Doggie, feeling very much humiliated, “I never knew. I never thought. I do see now the unpleasant position you’ve been in. People are brutes. But,” he added eagerly, “you told them the real reason?”

“What’s that?” she asked, looking at him with cold eyes.

Then Doggie knew that the wide world was against him. “I’m not fit. I’ve no constitution. I’m an impossibility.”

“You thought you had nerves until you learned to drive the car. Then you discovered that you hadn’t. You fancy you’ve a weak heart. Perhaps if you learned to walk thirty miles a day you would discover you hadn’t that either. And so with the rest of it.”

“This is very painful,” he said, going to the window and staring out. “Very painful. You are of the same opinion as the young women who sent me that abominable thing.”

She had been on the strain for a long while and something inside her had snapped. At his woebegone attitude she relented however, and came up and touched his shoulder.

“A girl wants to feel some pride in the man she’s going to marry. It’s horrible to have to be always defending him – especially when she’s not sure she’s telling the truth in his defence.”

He swung round horrified. “Do you think I’m shamming, so as to get out of serving in the Army?”

“Not consciously. Unconsciously, I think you are. What does your doctor say?”

Doggie was taken aback. He had no doctor. He had not consulted one for years, having no cause for medical advice. The old family physician who had attended his mother in her last illness and had prescribed Gregory powders for him as a child, had retired from Durdlebury long ago. There was only one person living familiar with his constitution, and that was himself. He made confession of the surprising fact. Peggy made a little gesture.

“That proves it. I don’t believe you have anything wrong with you. The nerves business made me sceptical. This is straight talking. It’s horrid, I know. But it’s best to get through with it once and for all.”

Some men would have taken deep offence and, consigning Peggy to the devil, have walked out of the room. But Doggie, a conscientious, even though a futile human being, was gnawed for the first time by the suspicion that Peggy might possibly be right. He desired to act honourably.

“I’ll do,” said he, “whatever you think proper.”

Peggy was swift to smite the malleable iron. To use the conventional phrase might give an incorrect impression of red-hot martial ardour on the part of Doggie.

“Good,” she said, with the first smile of the day. “I’ll hold you to it. But it will be an honourable bargain. Get Dr. Murdoch to overhaul you thoroughly, with a view to the Army. If he passes you, take a commission. Dad says he can easily get you one through his old friend General Gadsby at the War Office. If he doesn’t, and you’re unfit, I’ll stick to you through thick and thin, and make the young women of Durdlebury wish they’d never been born.”

She put out her hand. Doggie took it.

“Very well,” said he, “I agree.”

She laughed, and ran to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To the telephone – to ring up Dr. Murdoch for an appointment.”

“You’re flabby,” said Dr. Murdoch the next morning to an anxious Doggie in pink pyjamas; “but that’s merely a matter of unused muscles. Physical training will set it right in no time. Otherwise, my dear Trevor, you’re in splendid health. I was afraid your family history might be against you – the child of elderly parents, and so forth. But nothing of the sort. Not only are you a first-class life for an insurance company, but you’re a first-class life for the Army – and that’s saying a good deal. There’s not a flaw in your whole constitution.”

He put away his stethoscope and smiled at Doggie, who regarded him blankly as the pronouncer of a doom. He went on to prescribe a course of physical exercises, so many miles a day walking, such and such back-breaking and contortional performances in his bathroom; if possible, a skilfully graduated career in a gymnasium, but his words fell on the ears of a Doggie in a dream; and when he had ended, Doggie said:

“I’m afraid, Doctor, you’ll have to write all that out for me.”

“With pleasure,” smiled the doctor, and gripped him by the hand. And seeing Doggie wince, he said heartily: “Ah! I’ll soon set that right for you. I’ll get you something – an india-rubber contrivance to practise with for half an hour a day, and you’ll develop a hand like a gorilla’s.”

Dr. Murdoch grinned his way, in his little car, to his next patient. Here was this young slacker, coddled from birth, absolutely horse-strong and utterly confounded at being told so. He grinned and chuckled so much that he nearly killed his most valuable old lady patient, who was crossing the High Street.