"Haven't you got your rhymes yet? Damn it all!"
Mackenzie grumbled offensively:
"No, I haven't. It's more difficult to get rhymes than to write sonnets. . . . death, moil, coil, breath . . ." He paused.
"Heath, soil, toil, staggereth," Tietjens said contemptuously. "That's your sort of Oxford young woman's rhyme. . . . Go on . . . What is it?"
An extremely age-faded and unmilitary officer was beside the blanketed table. Tietjens regretted having spoken to him with ferocity. He had a grotesquely thin white beard. Positively, white whiskers! He must have gone through as much of the army as he had gone through, with those whiskers, because no superior officer—not even a field-marshal—would have the heart to tell him to take them off! It was the measure of his pathos. This ghost-like object was apologizing for not having been able to keep the draft in hand: he was requesting his superior to observe that these Colonial troops were without any instincts of discipline. None at all. Tietjens observed that he had a blue cross on his right arm where the vaccination marks are as a rule. He imagined the Canadians talking to this hero. . . . The hero began to talk to, Major Cornwallis of the R. A. S. C.
Tietjens said apropos of nothing:
"Is there a major Cornwallis in the A.S.C.? Good God!"
The hero protested faintly:
"The R.A.S.C."
Tietjens said kindly: