knew some of us, or thought the girls looked nice, I smiled and nodded back.  More Staff waved more arms.  We were awfully pleased with our reception.  Still three abreast on the road, the Ford having flickered up before death, we reached the crossroads as a large car with a flag on it came round the corner.  The car stopped dead.  So did we.  The two cars glared at each other.  The Ford writhed forward hideously in its death agony.  I thought I felt funny, and when Vee whispered something about “the Royal Standard” I knew why.  Royal Standard?  Good Lord!  I had visions of three laboriously acquired pips being torn from my sleeves by outraged authorities.  The air was rent by my wild yell to our driver to go on—­go on and carry the Ford with us on our bonnet if necessary.

What happened next is not very clear in my memory.  I have a hazy picture of purple A.P.M.’s, of our GEORGE sitting calmly in a Rolls Royce, of irrepressible woman poking a No. 2 Brownie against the window of our car and trying to find a perfectly good king in a small viewfinder; of the Colonel on my right saluting, with a fearful waggle of the hand, without his hat on, that article having been simply swept off by my own tremendous “circular-motion-thumb-close-to-the-for
efinger-touching-the-peak-of-the-cap, etc., etc.”  Through the haze I saw HIS MAJESTY graciously return our salute and I seem to recollect Vee taking his salute as a personal compliment to the feminine element in the car, and smiling back delightedly in return.

The next thing I remember was that the car had passed, the traffic man was gazing reproachfully at us, the Ford had expired and our chauffeur had stopped his engine.  I don’t know what Sadie did all this time, but since, from her position, she must have seen the whole thing in better perspective, I don’t wonder the girl looked white.

Returning to consciousness I heard Vee utter a tremendous sigh of intense satisfaction.

“I sniped him,” she said, and cuddled the No. 2 Brownie affectionately.

“Did you turn it round after the last one?” I asked suddenly.

“No, didn’t you?”

And of course we hadn’t.  And there, in the undeveloped spool lies HIS MAJESTY superimposed on the back of the Bosch piglet we had photographed outside Ypres.  Isn’t that just the hardest of luck?

I’m going to ask if I can develop the film without running the risk of losing my commission.  After all it’s not so very inappropriate, is it?

L.

* * * * *

    “Extensive floods are reported in the Home Counties.  Mr. Noah ——­
    had a narrow escape from drowning at ——­ on Saturday.”—­Scotch
    Paper.

And yet people say, “What’s in a name?”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE WAR NURSERY.

Nurse.  “WHICH BABY HAVE YOU COME FOR?”