ttle real difference in our social life.
The small town was pitch black at night. Prices rose. Small economies
were practised. Labour was scarce. Fewer young men out of uniform were
seen in the streets and neighbouring roads and lanes. Groups of wounded
from the hospital in their uniform of deep blue jean with red ties and
khaki caps gave a note of actuality to the streets. Otherwise, there
were few signs of war. Even the troops who hitherto swarmed about the
town had gradually been removed from billets to a vast camp of huts
some miles away, and appeared only sporadically about the place. I
missed them and the stimulus of their presence. They brought me into
closer touch with things. Marigold, too, pined for more occupation for
his one critical eye than was afforded by the local volunteers. He grew
morose, sick of a surfeit of newspapers. If he could have gone to
France and got through to the firing-line, I am sure he would have dug
a little trench all to himself and defied the Germans on his own
account.

In November Colonel Dacre was brought home gravely wounded, to a
hospital for officers in London. A nurse gave me the news in a letter
in which she said that he had asked to see me before an impending
hazardous operation. I went up to town and found him wrecked almost
beyond recognition. As we were the merest of acquaintances with nothing
between us save our common link with Boyce, I feared lest he should
desire to tell me of some shameful discovery. But his gay greeting and
the brave smile, pathetically grotesque through the bandages in which
his head was wrapped, reassured me. Only his eyes and mouth were
visible.

"It's worth while being done in," said he. "It makes one feel like a
Sultan. You have just to clap your hands and say 'I want this,' and
you've got it. I've a good mind to say to this dear lady, 'Fetch their
gracious Majesties from Buckingham Palace,' and I'm sure they'd be here
in a tick. It's awfully good of you to come, Meredyth."

I signed to Marigold, who had carried me into the ward and set me down
on a chair, and to the Sister, the "dear lady" of Dacre's reference, to
withdraw, and after a few sympathetic words I asked him why he had sent
for me.

"I'm broken to bits all over," he replied. "The doctors here say they
never saw such a blooming mess-up of flesh pretending to be alive. And
as for talking, they'd just as soon expect speech from a jellyfish
squashed by a steam-roller. If I do get t