Such was Peter’s family.  It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he feared God, certainly regarded not man.  Now the Flying Corps captain had promised Peter that he would let him see the new Lewis machine-gun.  It is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power.  It plays no great part in this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of Peter’s private correspondence.  For, after the Captain had discharged his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins.  This interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful.

“What do you want all those for, Major Peter?” I asked.

“Well, you see,” said Peter, “the kids at school”—­Peter now calls other boys of the same age as himself “kids,” on the same principle that a West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as “niggers”—­“keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must send them something.”

He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket.  “That’s from Jackson minor,” he said.  “Cheek, isn’t it?”

I began reading the letter aloud.

     DEAR OLD PAN—­You must be having a ripping time.  I see
     your letter is headed “The Front” ...

I looked at Peter.  He was blushing uncomfortably.

     ... so I suppose you’ve seen a lot.  The whole school’s fritefully
     bucked up about you, and we’re one up on Fenner’s....

“What’s Fenner’s?” I said to Peter.

“Oh, that’s another school at Beckenham.  They’re stinkers.  Put on no end of side because some smug of theirs won a schol’ at Uppingham last term.  But we beat them at footer.”

We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front.  He said, “Rot!” So I showed him the envelope of your letter with “Passed by the Censor” on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said, “That’s proof,” and he dried up.  He did look sick.  I hope you’ll get the V.C. or something—­the Head’ll be sure to give us a half-holiday.  Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head’s newspaper when he leaves it lying about—­you know how he swanks about it—­said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion of honours or something.  Smith said it was a medal; I said that was rot, and that it meant they’d given him a lot of other chaps to command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that legions were soldiers.  That shut him up.  So, Pan, old man, mind you get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you can’t bring it off, then come home with a medal or something.

“Peter,” I called out.  Peter had turned his back on me and was pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky.