"The very last man in the world I expected to see like this," I said. It was quite true. Judkins was the sort who would have attempted dreamy analyses with the drill-instructor.
"Don't blame me, old thing," he said with a shade of melancholy. "I know I am stiff and over age and all that, but the recruiting fellow said he would willingly overlook a decade. There was nothing else for it. It was the only way."
"How do you mean, 'the only way'?" I asked.
Judkins sighed.
"It was like this," he explained sadly. "I should have joined up before, but I have always tried to keep to the truth ever since I was seven and told a lie, and felt that I was lost. But I gave in at last. If Lord Derby looks at my papers he will think I am forty. So I am, and a bit more. I meant to deceive his lordship, though it went against the grain. I am sure I don't know what Mr. Walter Long will say if he ever finds out what I have done. I can picture him exclaiming, 'Here's this man, Private Judkins, declaring he is only forty, when to my certain knowledge he was born in '66.'
"I am risking all that because life became insupportable. There was hardly anybody left I cared about. The one waiter at my favourite restaurant who didn't breathe down one's neck when he was holding the vegetables—he had joined; and the person who understood cigars at the corner shop, he is in it too. The new man doesn't know the difference between a Murias and a Manilla. It was the same all round. There was nobody to cut my hair. My barber was forming fours. It is a wonder to me why the War people have had to hunt the slippers, the chaps who have held back, for there is very little to tempt one to keep out of the crowd now. I've joined so as to be with the fellows I know. Don't go and put it all down to patriotism; it was just sheer loneliness. The man who sold me my evening paper—you remember him? he had a squint and used to invest in Spanish lotteries and get me to translate the letters he received—he is a soldier now; and so is the bootblack who asked for tips for the races, and the door-keeper at the offices. They're all wearing khaki, all in; and it wasn't the same world without them, only a dreary make-believe, and so I decided to deceive the War Office and join my friends. Every day I am finding the folk I'd lost. The Corporal with whom I do most business was checktaker at a theatre I used to frequent—always told me whether the show was worth the money before I parted. And the life is suiting me fairly well. Last week's route-march in the rain was a far, far wetter thing than I had ever done, but——"
He turned and gravely saluted an officer who was coming up on the wind....
