David now strops his razor.  It is one of those self-binding safety razors which is all covered with cog-wheels and steam-gauges and levers and valves.  You feed the strop into it like paper into a printing-press, and it eats up the leather as low people eat spaghetti, making all the time a noise like a mowing-machine.  David loves that.  He whistles gay tunes while it happens.  He whistles while he shaves.  He cannot whistle while brushing his teeth, but he brushes his teeth as a man might wash down a cab in a large yard with plenty of room.

The moment it is over he whistles again.  Then he does deep breathing at the door of the dug-out. (Aeroplanes passing overhead have had narrow escapes from being dragged into the dug-out by sheer power of suction, when David deep-breathes.) Then he does muscle exercises.  He crooks his finger and from behind you see a muscle like a mushroom get up suddenly in the small of his back, run up his spine and hit him under the left ear.

Meanwhile he is whistling, and his batman is making sparks fly out of the buttons, which he cleans with glass-paper and gun-cotton just outside the door.

At eight, when I get carefully out of bed, David is beginning to don his shirt.  At nine we move together towards breakfast.

I am training David to say “Rah!  Rah!” against the day when he and General ROOSEVELT meet in a communication trench.  I am sure they will take to each other at once.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Basil.  “MOTHER, I THINK SATAN MUST BE ABOUT.”

Mother.  “WHY, DEAR?”

Basil.  “ISN’T IT SATAN THAT MAKES VERY GOOD PEOPLE FEEL BAD?”

Mother.  “YES, DEAR.”

Basil.  “WELL, I FEEL AS IF I DIDN’T WANT TO GO AND WASH MY FACE.”]

* * * * *

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE.

    ["The plain truth is that there are very few jobs that
    could not be done by women as well as they are being done
    by men.”—­Daily Paper.]

  Chloe, in the placid days
    Ere the war-clouds gathered,
  I was prodigal in praise
  Of your charm and winning ways;
  You became a cult, a craze
    (Heavens, how I blathered!);
  With an ardour undismayed and treacly
  I proposed (without success) bi-weekly.

  Now, my dear, it’s up to you
    To become the hero;
  Show us how a man should woo
  When he wills to win, and do
  Teach us how to bill and coo
    With our hopes at zero. 
  Chloe, for a change (it may amuse you),
  You propose to me—­and I’ll refuse you.

* * * * *

From an auction catalogue:—­

    “PRINCESS, Brown Mare, 7 years, 15-3, has been ridden by a
    nervous person, good manners, trained to the High School,
    Hant-le-Cole.”

Haute Ecole manners are usually of the best and we are glad that Hant-le-Cole, which we have been unable to find on the map, provides no exception.