‘He’s all right,’ said Bourne dispassionately; ‘anyway, he will always take his own line.’

‘Would ’e take ’is own line wi’ the O.C.? Yes, ’e would too; an’ a nice bloody mess ’e’d make of it. The Major’s only temp’ry ’imself. An’ what’s a man like who’s only temp’ry, an’ wants ’is job pukka? Why a bloody guardsman couldn’t please the bugger. You take a corp’ral comin’ from the first battalion, or from the second, same as I did, an’ what’s ’e think o’ this fuckin’ mob, eh? Well, it’s a dam’ sight worse when you get an officer from another regiment takin’ command o’ the battalion. ’e’s been cribbin’ everything. ’e’s asked Brigade already to send ’im an officer competent to take over the duties of adjutant. Captain Malet don’t want the adjutant’s job; but ’e don’t want Brigade to think he’ll never make anything better’n a good company officer, does ’e? The colour-sergeant’s just goin’ to sit back, an’ let ’im get on with it. ’e’s due for ’is pension, an’ ’e’s tryin’ to work ’is ticket. Then there’s the regimental.’

‘Well, nobody can teach the regimental his job,’ said Bourne, decisively.

‘I’m not sayin’ anything against ’im,’ said the corporal. ‘’e’s a friend o’ yours, though I can’t say I’m sweet on ’im myself. I don’t mind a man bein’ regimental, but ’e gives ’imself too many bloody airs, thinks ’imself more class than most of us, an’ tries to talk familiar to officers as don’t know enough to keep ’im in ’is place. I’m not worryin’ about ’im. But what’s goin’ to ’appen if ’e an’ the colour-sergeant start scrappin’ in the orderly-room?’

The thought of a scrap in the orderly-room gladdened Bourne’s jaded soul, and he had laughed softly to himself. The corporal got up, dusted bits of dead grass from his trousers, and they put their kit together for the move.

Now, listening a little distractedly to Shem and Martlow, while watching the approach of the regimental-sergeant-major, Bourne turned over these matters in his mind. He did not doubt for a moment that Tozer had told him all this so that he could drop a hint to the regimental if he thought fit; and Tozer was a decent man, who wasn’t trying to work off a grudge, or make mischief. The position of affairs was very much as the corporal had described it, but Bourne saw it from a slightly different angle. He had had it on the tip of his tongue, more than once in the course of the conversation, to tell the corporal that Major Blessington was a gentleman, and, whatever his private feelings for Captain Malet might be, he would do nothing that was not honourable; but he had wisely refrained, for fear of seeming to imply that the corporal’s standard of conduct in these matters was necessarily inferior because it was different. After all, honour, in that connection, is only an elaborate refinement of what are the decent instincts of the average man, and in the process of its refinement, perhaps there is a corresponding finesse thrown into the other scale as an off-set. War, which tested and had wrecked already so many conventions, tested not so much the general truth of a proposition, as its truth in relation to each and every individual case; and Bourne thought of many men, even men of rank, with military antecedents, whose honour, as the war increased its scope, had become a fugitive and cloistered virtue, though it would probably renew its lustre again in more costermonger times.