6 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



were my two cousins, Cecily Windus and Colonel 

 Kenneth Baird. We had to take Kenneth along because, 

 for one thing, he spoke Russian much better than his 

 sister, though they were both brought up in St. 

 Petersburg, and for another, he wanted to indulge his 

 mania for anthropology, upon which dry-as-dust 

 thesis he is writing a book. 



Cecily had some difficulty in arranging for the de- 

 sirable trek. That is the worst of being married. It 

 has such tying ties. I don't know that she would 

 have managed it at all but for an opportune series of 

 letters published in The Daily Mail every day for an 

 exhilarating fortnight : " Ought husbands and wives 

 to take their holidays apart ? " 



By the time all sorts of illustrious people, Sir E. 

 Shackleton, Monsieur Bleriot, Dr. Cook, Admiral 

 Peary, Madame Tetrazzini, a few Channel swimmers, 

 a Salome or two, and the Zanczigs had given their 

 opinions, backed up by the omniscient Editor himself, 

 that it would indeed be a wonderful thing for the 

 consolidation of the Empire if married people arranged 

 to go away occasionally in totally different directions, 

 Cecily and her husband felt it was up to them to prove 

 the matter one way or the other. 



But — I'm forgetting ! Forgetting the time-honoured 

 custom of sportsmen, honoured always in the observ- 

 ance and never the breach, on returning home from a 

 big or little shoot, to commence the inevitable book 

 with a comprehensive list of the weapons which did 

 so much execution. It is a beautiful rite, never dis- 

 regarded, in spite of the fact that every other shikari 



