“Hulloa, that you, Peter?” said a voice from the other side of the aeroplane.  The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast.

“It’s me, Captain S——­,” said Peter.  “Allow me to introduce my friend ——­” he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane.  “He’s attached to the staff at G.H.Q.,” he added impressively.  For the first time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather a personage.

The Captain and I discussed the merits of the new Lewis machine-gun, while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and monoplanes.

“That kid knows a thing or two,” I heard one of them say to the other in an undertone.  “Jolly little chap.”  Peter has an undoubted gift for Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge.  Peter, however, has other views.  He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity.  He is now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the prospect of the war not lasting another seven years.  When I told him that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my question as to when the war would end with a gloomy “Never,” he was mightily pleased.  That was a bit of all right, he remarked.

Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the public service—­the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian Police.  Wherever there’s a bit of a scrap, whether it’s Dacoits or Pathans, wherever there’s a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether it’s plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of Peter’s family in the midst of it.  One of his uncles, who is a Major in the R.F.A., saved a battery at X——­ Y——.  Another is the chief of the most mysterious of our public services—­a man who speaks little and listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who changes his address about once every three months.  For if you have a price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks.  He neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands an almost sacerdotal abnegation.  Peter knows very little about this uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, “Uncle Dick’s got eyes like gimlets.”  But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public Uncle Dick, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know such a bird of passage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored expression.  Uncle Dick, although Peter does not know it, is the counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of the G.H.Q.  Staff.  Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most, although I knew him least.  Some day, if and when I have the honour to know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call it The Man behind the Scenes.