“Now look here, old son,” said Dennis, in an authoritative voice. “You mustn’t imagine I’m dealing with your trouble, whatever it is (for you are in trouble, Ronald), in a matter-of-fact and unsympathetic way. But what you’ve got to do now is to get up, have a tub, slip into a dressing-gown, and have a quiet little dinner with me here. It’s just gone eight, so you ought to be ready for it.”
He disappeared to turn on the bath-water, and then, when he met me in the passage making for the bathroom, he handed me a glass.
“Drink this, old chap,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked suspiciously. “I don’t want any fancy pick-me-ups. They only make you worse afterwards.”
“That was prescribed by Doctor Common Sense,” he answered lightly. “It’s peach bitters!”
After my tub I was able to tackle my dinner, with the knowledge that I was badly in need of something to eat, a feeling which surprised me very much. Throughout the meal Dennis told me of the enlistment of Jack and poor Tommy Evans, and we discussed their prospects and the chances of my seeing them before they disappeared into the crowded ranks of Kitchener’s Army. Dennis himself had been ruthlessly refused. He spoke of trying his luck again until they accepted him, but I knew, from what he told me of the doctor’s remarks, that he had no earthly chance of being passed. He seemed to have entirely mastered his regret at his inability to serve his country in the ranks, but I understood at once that he was merely putting his own troubles in the background in face of my own. The meal over, we “got behind” two of Dennis’s excellent cigars, and made ourselves comfortable.
“Now then, old man,” said my friend, “a complete and precise account of what has happened to you since you left King’s Cross two days ago.”
“It has all been so extraordinary and terrible,” I said, “that I hardly know where to begin.”
“I saw you last at the station,” he said, laying a hand on my knee. “Begin from there.” So I began at the beginning, and told him just what had happened, exactly as I have told the reader.
Dennis was deeply moved.