e of
life at your disposal, and advise you in this crisis, so I must ask
you to let me know the exact conditions in which you find yourself."

Doggie smiled once again, finding something diverting and yet
stimulating in the calm assurance of Private McPhail.

"I'm not aware that I've asked you for advice, Phineas."

"The fact that you're not aware of many things that you do is no proof
that you don't do them--and do them in a manner perfectly obvious to
another party," replied Phineas sententiously. "You're asking for
advice and consolation from any friendly human creature to whom you're
not ashamed to speak. You've had an awful sorrowful time, laddie."

Doggie roamed about the room, with McPhail's little grey eyes fixed on
him. Yes, Phineas was right. He would have given most of his
possessions to be able, these later days, to pour out his tortured
soul into sympathetic ears. But shame had kept him, still kept him,
would always keep him, from the ears of those he loved. Yes, Phineas
had said the diabolically right thing. He could not be ashamed to
speak to Phineas. And there was something good in Phineas which he had
noticed with surprise. How easy for him, in response to bitter
accusation, to cast the blame on his mother? He himself had given the
opening. How easy for him to point to his predecessor's short tenure
of office and plead the alternative of carrying out Mrs. Trevor's
theory of education or of resigning his position in favour of some
sycophant even more time-serving? But he had kept silent.... Doggie
stopped short and looked at Phineas with eyes dumbly questioning and
quivering lips.

Phineas rose and put his hands on the boy's shoulders, and said very
gently:

"Tell me all about it, laddie."

Then Doggie broke down, and with a gush of unminded tears found
expression for his stony despair. His story took a long time in the
telling; and Phineas interjecting an occasional sympathetic "Ay, ay,"
and a delicately hinted question, extracted from Doggie all there was
to tell, from the outbreak of war to their meeting on Waterloo Bridge.

"And now," cried he at last, a dismally tragic figure, his young face
distorted and reddened, his sleek hair ruffled from the back into
unsightly perpendicularities (an invariable sign of distracted
emotion) and his hands appealingly outstretched--"what the hell am I
going to do?"

"Laddie," said Phineas, standing on the hearthrug, his hands on his
hips, "if you had po