Then suddenly I found myself back again in the London restaurant.

“Yes,” I said to the waiter, “it is possible, as you say, that Monsieur Joseph heard of something better in France.”

And raising my glass I drank a silent toast.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  The TUBER’S repartee.

German pirate.  “Gott strafe England!”

British potato.  “Tuber UeBER Alles!”]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Crowd.  “WOULD YER LIKE TO GO TO HORSPITAL?”—­“SHALL I GET YER A DROP OF BRANDY?”—­“DID YER SLIP ON THE BANANA-PEEL?” “DID YER FALL?”—­“ARE YER HURT, SIR?”—­“SHALL I FETCH A DOCTOR?”—­“IS THAT YOUR HAT, SIR?”

Ex-Cabinet Minister.  “THE ANSWERS TO ONE, TWO, FIVE AND SIX ARE IN THE NEGATIVE; TO THREE, FOUR AND SEVEN IN THE AFFIRMATIVE.”]

* * * * *

THE MUD LARKS.

You have all seen it in the latest V.C. list—­“The Reverend Paul Grayne, Chaplain to the Forces, for conspicuous bravery and gallant example in the face of desperate circumstances.”

You have all pictured him, the beau-ideal of muscular Christian, the Fighting Parson, eighteen hands high, terrific in wind and limb, with a golden mane and a Greek profile; a Pekinese in the drawing-room, a bull-dog in the arena; a soupcon of Saint FRANCIS with a dash of JOHN L. SULLIVAN—­and all that.

But we who have met heroes know that they are very seldom of the type which achieves the immortality of the picture post-card.

The stalwart with pearly teeth, lilac eyes and curly lashes is C3 at Lloyd’s (Sir FRANCIS), and may be heard twice daily at the Frivolity singing, “My Goo-goo Girl from Honolulu” to entranced flappers; while the lad who has Fritzie D. Hun backed on the ropes, clinching for time, is usually gifted with bow legs, freckles, a dented proboscis and a coiffure after the manner of a wire-haired terrier.

The Reverend Paul Grayne, V.C., sometime curate of Thorpington Parva, in the county of Hampshire, was no exception to this rule.  AEsthetically he was a blot on the landscape; among all the heroes I have met I never saw anything less heroically moulded.

He stood about five feet nought and tipped the beam at seven stone nothing.  He had a mild chinless face and his long beaky nose, round large spectacles, and trick of cocking his head sideways when conversing, gave him the appearance of an intelligent little dicky-bird.

I remember very well the occasion of our first meeting.  I was in my troop lines one afternoon, blackguarding a farrier, when a loud nicker sounded on the road and a black cob, bearing a feebly protesting padre upon his fat back, trotted through the gate, up to the lines and began to swop How d’y’do’s with my hairies.  The little Padre cocked his head on one side and oozed apologies from every pore.