Then the next day would be fine and dry and warm, and it would be early closing for the Bosch artillery, and the infantry would go marching past my office window, whistling and singing and behaving as if the whole thing was a jolly old picnic; and who’d be an inkslinger in such weather?  And Fortune, modestly intruding, would say to me casually, “I think I’ve arranged that rather well, don’t you?”

“Ah, you’ve arranged something at last, have you?” I’d say, assuming that she must be thinking about me, and I’d open my official envelopes with an unusual interest, feeling practically sure that one of them must contain immediate orders for me—­the one and only me—­to proceed forthwith to England and reorganise the War Office, taking over a couple of six-cylinder cars and a furnished flat in St. James’s for the purpose.

Poor old Fortune! what could she say next?  She’d look at me, more in sorrow than in anger, and murmur, “Aren’t you forgetting that this is a war and you are supposed to be fighting it?” Did I blush for shame?  Not I. As bold as brass I’d look old Fortune straight in the face and, with righteous indignation, would say, “I know as well as you do, Ma’am, that it is a war; but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be a just war.”  Thinking it out I have never been quite able to see what I meant by that, as applied to my own case.  However, I seem to have said the right thing, and it appears to have impressed Fortune very considerably, because—­well, Charles, here I am.

Yet if there is justice in this world (and I subsist on the confident hope and belief that there is not) I know what the end of it must be.  That confounded orderly, turned traitor, will one day search me out, however far I may have wandered from the battlefield meanwhile, and, saluting ironically, will hand me an envelope marked “Urgent, secret, confidential, personal, private.”  The contents will be a piece of news and some orders, and all that Fortune will have had to do with it will be to attach a forwarding slip, “Passed to you, please, for your information and necessary action.”  The news will be that for everyone else the War is over, and the infantry and the rest of them will take over forthwith my present circumstances, being free to revel in the trams and the mosquitoes and the nasty colds to their hearts’ delight.  The orders will be that for me the War is about to begin again in grim earnest, and that to-morrow at dawn I take over and defend till further notice, and against all the most noisy and loathsome inventions that man can devise, that sector of the trenches which extends from the Swiss frontier to the sea.

When that day comes I shall be too busy (taking cover) to have leisure to write to you.  Meanwhile I shall still be in touch with life from time to time and will pass on to you such scraps as come my way.  Yours ever, Henry.

* * * * *

    “The India Office goes to Mr. Montagu.”—­The Star.