Orden were conversing in low tones at one end of the table; the
Colonel was eating his luncheon, silently and with a certain air of
resignation; and so Billy Woods was left alone to attend and marvel.
The ideas they advanced seemed to him, for the most part, sensible.
What puzzled him was the uniform gravity which they accorded
equally--as it appeared to him--to the discussion of the most pompous
platitudes and of the most arrant nonsense. They were always serious;
and the general tone of infallibility, Billy thought, could be
warranted only by a vast fund of inexperience.
But, in the main, they advocated theories he had always