o, "Search me," he adjured the skies in good Americanese, "if
girls aren't the blamedest."

THE V.C.

I had forgotten that I ordered frogs' legs. When mine were placed before
me I laughed. I always laugh at the sight of frogs' legs because of the
person and the day of which they remind me. Nobody noticed that I
laughed or asked the reason why, though it was an audible chuckle, and
though I sat at the head of my own dinner-party at the Cosmic Club.

The man for whom the dinner was given, Colonel Robert Thornton, my
cousin, a Canadian, who got his leg shot off at Vimy Ridge, was making
oration about the German Crown Prince's tactics at Verdun, and that was
the reason that ten men were not paying attention to me and that I was
not paying attention to Bobby. When the good chap talks human talk,
tells what happened to people and what their psychological processes
seemed to be, he is entertaining. He has a genuine gift of sympathy and
a power to lead others in the path he treads; in short, he tells a good
story. But like most people who do one thing particularly well he is
always priding himself on the way he does something else. He likes to
look at Colonel Thornton as a student of the war, and he has the time of
his life when he can get people to listen to what he knows Joffre and
Foch and Haig and Hindenberg ought to have done. So at this moment he
was enjoying his evening, for the men I had asked to meet him, all
strangers to him, ignorant of his real powers, were hanging on his
words, partly because no one can help liking him whatever he talks
about, and partly because, with that pathetic empty trouser-leg and the
crutch hooked over his chair, he was an undoubted hero. So I heard the
sentences ambling, and reflected that Hilaire Belloc with maps and a
quiet evening would do my tactical education more good than Bobby
Thornton's discursions. And about then I chuckled unnoticed, over the
silly frogs' legs.

"Tell me, Colonel Thornton, do you consider that the French made a
mistake in concentrating so much of their reserve--" It was the
Governor himself who was demanding this earnestly of Bobby. And I saw
that the Governor and the rest were hypnotized, and did not need me.

So I sat at the head of the table, and waiters brooded over us, and
cucumbers and the usual trash happened, and Bobby held forth while the
ten who were bidden listened as to one sent from heaven. And, being
superfluous, I withdrew mentally to