And with this dark saying Sparrow Cockerell took his departure.

II

The Battalion, headed by their tatterdemalion pipers, stumped into the town in due course, and were met on the outskirts by the billeting party, who led the various companies to their appointed place.  After inspecting their new quarters, and announcing with gloomy satisfaction that they were the worst, dirtiest, and most uncomfortable yet encountered, everybody settled down in the best place he could find, and proceeded to make himself remarkably snug.

Battalion Headquarters and the officers of “A” Company were billeted in an imposing mansion which actually boasted a bathroom.  It is true that there was no water, but this deficiency was soon made good by a string of officers’ servants bearing buckets.  Beginning with Colonel Kemp, who was preceded by an orderly bearing a small towel and a large loofah, each officer performed a ceremonial ablution; and it was a collection of what Major Wagstaffe termed “bright and bonny young faces” which collected round the Mess table at seven o’clock.

It was in every sense a gala meal.  Firstly, it was weeks since any one (except Second Lieutenant M’Corquodale, newly joined, and addressed, for painfully obvious reasons, as “Tich”) had found himself at table in an apartment where it was possible to stand upright.  Secondly, the Mess President had coaxed glass tumblers out of the ancient concierge; and only those who have drunk from enamelled ironware for weeks on end can appreciate the pure joy of escape from the indeterminate metallic flavour which such vessels impart to all beverages.  Thirdly, these same tumblers were filled to the brim with inferior but exhilarating champagne—­purchased, as they euphemistically put it in the Supply Column, “locally.”  Lastly, the battalion had several months of hard fighting behind it, probably a full month’s rest before it, and the conscience of duty done and recognition earned floating like a halo above it.  For the moment memories of Nightmare Wood and the Kidney Bean Redoubt—­more especially the latter—­were effaced.  Even the sorrowful gaps in the ring round the table seemed less noticeable.

The menu, too, was almost pretentious.  First came the hors d’oeuvres—­a tin of sardines.  This was followed by what the Mess Corporal described as a savoury omelette, but which the Second-in-Command condemned as “a regrettable incident.”

“It is false economy,” he observed dryly to the Mess President, “to employ Mark One [1] eggs as anything but hand-grenades.”

[Footnote 1:  In the British army each issue of arms or equipment receives a distinctive “Mark.”  Mark I denotes the earliest issue.]