"Yes, Brighton. I was down there for a Saturday to Monday with my Missus. This absolutely topping weather, you know. We were coming back Monday evening. Yesterday. Very well. Monday morning we were sunning on the pier, she and I. I was reading the paper, she was watching the people and making remarks about them. If Paradise is doing in the next world what you best liked doing in this, my wife will ask Peter if she can sit at the gate and watch the demobilised souls arriving and pass remarks about them. She certainly will.
"Well, all of a sudden she began, 'Oh, what a frightfully _in_teresting face that man's got!' That's the way she talks. 'What a most _in_teresting face. Do look, Percy.'
"I said, 'Well, so have I got an interesting face. Look at mine.'
"'Oh, but _do_, Percy. You _must_. On that seat by himself just opposite. He's just staring at nothing and thinking and thinking. And his face looks so worn and tired and yet so _very_ kind and such a _wist_ful look as though he was thinking of--'
"I growled, still reading: 'He's probably thinking what he's going to have for lunch. Oh, dash it, do stop jogging me. Where is he?'
"And then I looked across. Old Sabre! By Jove, you might have pushed me over with one finger. Old Sabre in a tweed suit and a soft hat, and his game leg stuck out straight, and his old stick, and his hands about a thousand miles deep in his pockets, and looking--yes, my wife said the true thing when she said how he was looking. Any one would have taken a second squint at old Sabre's face as I saw it then--taken a second squint and wondered what he'd been through and what on earth his mind could be on now. They certainly would.
"I knew. I knew; but I tell you this, I could see he'd been through a tough lot more, and thought a considerable number of fathoms deeper, in the month since I'd seen him last. Yes, by Jove, I could see that without spectacles.
"I went over to him. You could have pushed _him_ off the seat with one finger when he saw me. Except that you wouldn't have had any fingers worth using as fingers, after he'd squeezed your hands as he squeezed mine. Both of them. And his face like a shout on a sunny morning. Yes, he was pleased. I like to think how jolly pleased the old chap was.