Then Mr.Manley, who had been gifted by Heaven with a lively imagination wholly untrammelled by any straining passion for exactitude, entertained Mr.Stebbing with a vivid account of his experiences as leader of the first Great Push.

Mr.Manley was one of the many rather stout, soft men who in different parts of Great Britain will till their dying days entertain acquaintances with vivid accounts of their experiences as leaders of the Great Pushes.

Like that of most of them, his war experience, before his weak heart had procured him his discharge from the army, had consisted wholly of office work in England.

His account of his strenuous fighting lacked nothing of fire or picturesqueness on that account.

He was too modest to say in so many words that but for his martial qualities there would have been no Great Push at all, and that any success it had had was due to those martial qualities, but that was the impression he left on Mr.Stebbing's simple and rather plastic mind.