tructor. But as the little infantry drill he had ever learned had
all been changed since the Boer War, I gathered an unholy joy from
seeing him hang like a little child on the lips of the official
Sergeant Instructor of the corps. In the evenings he and I mugged up
the text-books together; and with the aid of the books I put him
through all the new physical exercises. I was a privileged person. I
could take my own malicious pleasure out of Marigold's enforced
humility, but I would be hanged if anybody else should. Sergeant
Marigold should instruct those volunteers as he once instructed the
recruits of his own battery. So I worked with him like a nigger until
there was nothing in the various drills of a modern platoon that he
didn't know, and nothing that he could not do with the mathematical
precision of his splendid old training.

One night during the thick of it Betty came in. I waved her into a
corner of the library out of the way, and she smoked cigarettes and
looked on at the performance. Now I come to think of it, we must have
afforded an interesting spectacle. There was the gaunt, one-eyed,
preposterously wigged image clad in undervest and shrunken yellow
flannel trousers which must have dated from his gym-instructor days in
the nineties, violently darting down on his heels, springing up,
kicking out his legs, shooting out his arms, like an inspired
marionette, all at the words of command shouted in fervent earnest by a
shrivelled up little cripple in a wheel-chair.

When it was over--the weather was warm--he passed a curved forefinger
over his dripping forehead, cut himself short in an instinctive action
and politely dried his hand on the seat of his trousers. Then his one
eye gleamed homage at Betty and he drew himself up to attention.

"Do you mind, sir, if I send in Ellen with the drinks?"

I nodded. "You'll do very well with a drink yourself, Marigold."

"It's thirsty work and weather, sir."

He made a queer movement of his hand--it would have been idiotic of him
to salute--but he had just been dismissed from military drill, so his
hand went up to the level of his breast and--right about turn--he
marched out of the room. Betty rose from her corner and threw herself
in her usual impetuous way on the ground by my chair.

"Do you know," she cried, "you two dear old things were too funny for
words."

But as I saw that her eyes were foolishly moist, I was not as offended
as I might have been by her perce