“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?  He’s in no danger at Rouen, at any rate.  If we go on as we’re going on now, they won’t even hear the guns down there soon.  Come, little girl, what’s worrying you?  I can see there’s something.”

They were in the street now, walking towards the park, and Hilda did not immediately reply.  Then she said:  “What are you going to do?  Can’t you come in for a little?  Father and mother will be out till late, and you can keep me company.”

He glanced at his watch.  “I’ve got to be at the War Office later,” he said, “but my man doesn’t reach town till after ten, so I will.  The club’s not over-attractive these days.  What with the men who think one knows everything and won’t tell, and the men who think they know everything and want to tell, it’s a bit trying.”

Hilda laughed merrily.  “Poor Uncle Bob,” she said, giving him her childhood’s name that had never been discontinued between them.  “You shall come home with me, and sit in father’s chair, and have a still decent whisky and a cigar, and if you’re very good I’ll read you part of Peter’s letter.”

“What would Peter say?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t mind the bits I’ll read to you.  Indeed, I think he’d like it:  he’d like to know what you think.  You see, he’s awfully depressed; he feels he’s not wanted out there, and—­though I don’t know what he means—­that things, religious things, you know, aren’t real.”

“Not wanted, eh?” queried the old soldier.  “Now, I wonder why he resents that.  Is it because he feels snubbed?  I shouldn’t be surprised if he had a bit of a swelled head, your young man, you know, Hilda.”

“Sir Robert Doyle, if you’re going to be beastly, you can go to your horrid old club, and I only hope you’ll be worried to death.  Of course it isn’t that.  Besides, he says everyone is very friendly and welcomes him—­only he feels that that makes it worse.  He thinks they don’t want—­well, what he has to give, I suppose.”

“What he has to give?  But what in the world has he to give?  He has to take parade services, and visit hospitals and” (he was just going to say “bury the dead,” but thought it hardly sounded pleasant), “make himself generally decent and useful, I suppose.  That’s what chaplains did when I was a subaltern, and jolly decent fellows they usually were.”

“Well, I know.  That’s what I should feel, and that’s what I don’t quite understand.  I suppose he feels he’s responsible for making the men religious—­it reads like that.  But you shall hear the letter yourself.”

Doyle digested this for a while in silence.  Then he gave a sort of snort, which is inimitable, but always accompanied his outbursts against things slightly more recent than the sixties.  It had the effect of rousing Hilda, at any rate.

“Don’t, you dear old thing,” she said, clutching his arm.  “I know exactly what you’re going to say.  Young men of your day minded their business and did their duty, and didn’t theorise so much.  Very likely.  But, you see, our young men had the misfortune to be born a little later than you.  And they can’t help it.”  She sighed a little.  “It is trying sometimes....  But they’re all right really, and they’ll come back to things.”