“Of course it’s horrid. But they’ve got to stick it, haven’t they? And then there’s another thing. Out there one hasn’t any worries.”
Peggy pricked up her ears. “Worries? What kind of worries?”
Doggie became conscious of indiscretion. He temporized.
“Oh, all kinds. Every man with a sort of trained intellect must have them. You remember John Stuart Mill’s problem: ‘Which would you sooner be—a contented hog, or a discontented philosopher?’ At the Front you have all the joys of the contented hog.”
Instinctively he stretched out his hand for a cigarette. She bent forward, gripped a matchbox, and lit the cigarette for him.
Doggie thanked her politely; but in a dim way he felt conscious of something lacking in her little act of helpfulness. It had been performed with the unsmiling perfunctoriness of the nurse; an act of duty, not of tenderness. As she blew out the match, which she did with an odd air of deliberation, her face wore the same expression of hardness it had done on that memorable day when she had refused him her sympathy over the white feather incident.
“I can’t understand your wanting to go back at all. Surely you’ve done your bit,” she said.
“No one has done his bit who’s alive and able to carry on,” replied Doggie.
Peggy reflected. Yes. There was some truth in that. But she thought it rather hard lines on the wounded to be sent back as soon as they were patched up. Most of them hated the prospect. That was why she couldn’t understand Doggie’s desire.
“Anyhow, it’s jolly noble of you, dear old thing,” she declared with rather a spasmodic change of manner, “and I’m very proud of you.”