Hamilton grinned.
"Bones does," he said. "He's full of the idea, and offered to give me tips on the way a trench should be dug—he's feeling rotten about things ... you know what I mean. His regiment was at Mons."
Sanders nodded.
"I understand," he said quietly. "And you ... you're a jolly good soldier, Hamilton—how do you feel about it all?"
Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.
"They would have taken me for the Cameroons, but somebody had to stay," he said quietly. "After all, it is one's business to ... to do one's job in the station of life to which it has pleased God to call him. This is my work ... here."
Sanders laid his hand on the other's shoulder.
"That's the game as it should be played," he said, and his blue eyes were as soft and as tender as a woman's. "There is no war here—we are the keepers of the King's peace, Hamilton."
"It's rotten...."
"I know—I feel that way myself. We're out of it—the glory of it—the chance of it—the tragedy of it. And there are others. Think of the men in India eating their hearts out ... praying for the order that will carry them from the comfort of their lives to the misery and the death—and the splendour, I grant you—of war."