1. I think I have more claim to a horse called Toby than has a contributor to "Our Feathered Friends" or whatever paper the Sniping Officer writes for.
2. When I joined the Army, Celia was inconsolable. I begged her to keep a stiff upper lip, to which she replied that she could do it better if I promised not to keep a bristly one. I pointed out that the country wanted bristles; and though, between ourselves, we might regard it as a promising face spoilt for a tradition, still discipline was discipline. And so the bristles came, and remained until the happy day when the War Office, at the risk of losing the war, made them optional. Immediately they were uprooted.
Now the Colonel has only one fault (I have been definitely promised my second star in 1927, so he won't think I am flattering him with a purpose): he likes moustaches. His own is admirable, and I have no wish for him to remove it, but I think he should be equally broad-minded about mine.
"You aren't really more beautiful without it," he said. "A moustache suits you."
"My wife doesn't think so," I said firmly. I had the War Office on my side, so I could afford to be firm.
The Colonel looked at me, and then he looked out of the window, and made the following remarkable statement.
"Toby," he said gently to himself, "doesn't like clean-shaven officers."
This hadn't occurred to me; I let it sink in.
"Of course," I said at last, "one must consider one's horse. I quite see that."
"With a bicycle," he said, "it's different."