If there had been no age limit and no medical examination Marigold
would have re-enlisted as John Smith, on the outbreak of war,
without a moment's consideration of the position of his wife and
myself. And Mrs. Marigold, a soldier's wife of twenty years'
standing, would have taken it, just like myself, as a matter of
course. But as he could not re-enlist, he pestered the War Office
(just as I did) and I pestered for him to give him military
employment. And all in vain.

"Why don't they take me, sir? When I see these fellows with three
stripes on their arms, and looking at them and wondering at them
as if they were struck three stripes by lightning, and calling
themselves Sergeants and swanking about and letting their men
waddle up to their gun like cows--and when I see them, as I've
done with your eyes--watch one of their men pass by an officer in
the street without saluting, and don't kick the blighter to--to--
to barracks--it fairly makes me sick. And I ask myself, sir, what
I've done that I should be loafing here instead of serving my
country."

"You've somehow mislaid an eye and a hand and gone and got a tin
head. That's what you've done," said I. "And the War Office has a
mark against you as a damned careless fellow."

"Tin head or no tin head," he grumbled, "I could teach those
mother's darlings up there the difference between a battery of
artillery and a skittle-ally."

"I believe you've mentioned the matter to them already," I