Herbert Jenkins

“ BY HERBERT JENKINS
“WOMEN are the devil and Nature is a wanton.” Colonel Richard Walsh, V.C., D.S.O., etc, leaned back in his chair and sucked malevolently at his pipe, which, as if to mark its entire concurrence with its owner’s despairing and gloomy tone, had incontinently gone out.
“Trying to be original, Walsh, or is it merely dyspepsia?” lazily inquired his friend, Oliver Reynolds. ”

“ They like bachelors.”
“Ever know of a fellow in the service who funked war for fear of his own skin?’ There was a note of seriousness in Walsh’s voice that caused the other to eye him curiously.
“Can’t say I have,” was the reply.
“Every fellow’s like that when he’s in love, badly in love. He’s just a damned skunk.”
“Well, let me know when it strikes you, and I'll come round and take a few notes,” said Reynolds with a laugh.
“It has struck me, and badly,” replied Walsh, leaning forward in his chair and tapping Reynolds’s coat-sleeve with the mouthpiece of his pipe. ”

“ Funk, sheer funk.”
“Are you making sport of me? Because if you are, it’s not a bit funny.”
“It was all through Doris. I was mad about her and war meant that I should have to go to the front, and that seemed to be the end. I wanted to live and love Doris. I became a damned coward.” ”