But we who have met heroes know that they are very seldom of the type
which achieves the immortality of the picture post-card.

The stalwart with pearly teeth, lilac eyes and curly lashes is C3 at
Lloyd's (Sir FRANCIS), and may be heard twice daily at the Frivolity
singing, "My Goo-goo Girl from Honolulu" to entranced flappers; while
the lad who has Fritzie D. Hun backed on the ropes, clinching for time,
is usually gifted with bow legs, freckles, a dented proboscis and a
coiffure after the manner of a wire-haired terrier.

The Reverend Paul Grayne, V.C., sometime curate of Thorpington Parva, in
the county of Hampshire, was no exception to this rule. Æsthetically he
was a blot on the landscape; among all the heroes I have met I never saw
anything less heroically moulded.

He stood about five feet nought and tipped the beam at seven stone
nothing. He had a mild chinless face and his long beaky nose, round
large spectacles, and trick of cocking his head sideways when
conversing, gave him the appearance of an intelligent little dicky-bird.

I remember very well the occasion of our first meeting. I was in my
troop lines one afternoon, blackguarding a farrier, when a loud nicker
sounded on the road and a black cob, bearing a feebly protesting padre
upon his fat back, trotted through the gate, up to the lines and began
to swop How d'y'do's with my hairies. The little Padre cocked his head
on one side and oozed apologies from every pore.

He hadn't meant to intrude, he twittered; Peter had brought him; it was
Peter's fault; Peter was very eccentric.