folks’ unseriously.  Honest, if I had been really thinking of you along with other girls, I would not have mentioned it.  I’m not that sort of girl, and I’m not the sort that gets cold in the head, either, thanking you all the same for kind enquiries.  But I’m by no means faultless.  I get what the novelists call flippant when I am feeling most solemn.  I was a bit down-hearted when I wrote last, for your letter had said ‘Dardanelles.’  Now you say ‘Flanders,’ which is no better, but I am not going to cry this time.  Surely they won’t send you away so soon, dear.

Glad to hear Willie is greatly changed, and I hope he will keep on changing, though I could never admire a man that ate a whole tin of salmon in once.  I’m sure the two girls were not so dreadfully plain as you report.  Had they got their hair up?  Girls don’t usually put out their tongues at young men after their hair is up, so I presume they were very young.  It was like you to ask your uncle to send Willie the parcel.

Miss Tod is not so brisk just now.  The doctor says she must either drink less tea or become a chronic dyspeptomaniac.  She prefers the latter.  Poor old thing, her joys are few and simple!  Trade is not so bad.  A new line in poetical patriotical postcards is going well.  The poetry is the worst yet.

I am sending you some cigarettes with my uncle’s best wishes and a pair of socks with mine.  Perhaps you have enough socks from home already.  If so, give them to W. T., and ask him from me to practise blushing.  He can begin by winking at himself in a mirror thrice daily.

When are you going to get leave again?  Miss Tod says I can get away at 6, any night I want to.  No; I don’t want you to stop putting those marks in your letters.  If you can find one in this letter, you may take it, and I hope it will make you half as happy as I want you to be.  Good-night.

  CHRISTINA.

IX

THE FAT GIRL

Never a day passed without its camp rumour.  If Macgregor was disposed to be over-credulous, his friend Willie was sceptical enough for two.

‘I hear we’re for the Dardanelles next week,’ the former observed one afternoon.

Willie snorted.  ’What the ——­ wud they send us yins to the Dardanelles afore we ken hoo to fire a rifle?’

‘I heard it for a fac’,’ Macgregor returned imperturbably.  ’They want us yins for begnet wark, no for snipin’.’

’Begnet wark!  I’ll bet ye fifty fags I get a dizzen Turks on ma begnet afore ye get twa on yours!’

Macgregor let the boastful irrelevance pass.  ‘I wonder,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘if we’ll get extra leave afore we gang.’

‘Plenty o’ leave!  Keep yer mind easy, Macgreegor.  It’s a million in gold to a rotten banana we never get a bash at onybody.  It’s fair putrid to think o’ a’ the terrible hard wark we’re daein’ here to nae purpose.  I wisht I was deid!  Can ye len’ ‘us a bob?’