"I can understand the difficulty you have in believing that people could behave so ... so basely," Mullally said, as the train carried them out of Salisbury.

"I don't believe it at all," Henry answered, "and I think that any one who does believe it is a malicious-minded ass!"

"But they hold the shares ... you can see the list of shareholders at Somerset House for yourself ... and they'll take the profits. I'm quite willing to believe in the goodness of the average man ... in fact, I've denounced the doctrine of Original Sin very forcibly before now ... but I must say that there's something very suspicious about this business. Very suspicious. And you know some of the soldiers are really rather!..."

"Rather what?" said Henry.

"Well, I don't like saying anything about anybody, but some of them are not all that they should be. They should set an example, and they don't. I've heard some very startling things about the behaviour of the soldiers. Very startling things. I don't want to say anything that may sound unpleasant, but I suggest that you should read the Report of the Registrar-General when it comes out. It will cause some consternation, I can promise you. Young women, Quinn, simply can't be kept away from the soldiers, and I've been told ... well!..."

Again he shrugged his shoulders, and turned his palms upwards and raised his eyebrows. A Member of Parliament had written to the Morning Post about it ... a Conservative member of Parliament, not a Liberal or a Socialist, mark you, but a Conservative....

"Two thousand cases expected in one town," Mullally whispered. "Knows it for a fact. Seen the girls!..."

Mullally proposed a calculation. They were to work out the number of unmarried girls who would shortly become mothers, using the Conservative M.P.'s letter as a basis of calculation.

"Thousands and thousands," he prophesied. "Hundreds of thousands. All illegitimate. I believe, of course, that we make too much fuss about the marriage laws, Quinn, but still ... there are limits, don't you think? I mean, we must make changes slowly, not in this ... this drastic fashion. But what are you to expect? When the very Cabinet Ministers are proved to have shares in munition works, is it any wonder that the common soldier runs riot?..."

"I get out at the next station," said Henry.

"Do you?" said Mullally. "But I thought you didn't change until you got to Whitcombe Junction?"

"I don't" said Henry, "but I get out at the next station!"

"I see," said Mullally.

"About time," Henry thought.