“I’m sorry, boy!” he said.  “I never noticed.  You are chilled to the bone.  Button this round you.”

Cockerell made a feeble protest, but was cut short.

“Nonsense!  There’s no sense in taking risks after you’ve done your job.”

Cockerell assented, a little sleepily.  His allowance of rum was bringing its usual vulgar but comforting influence to bear upon an exhausted system.

“I see you have been wounded, sir,” he observed, noting with a little surprise two gold stripes upon his host’s left sleeve—­the sleeve of a “non-combatant.”

“Yes,” said the Major.  “I got the first one at Le Gateau.  He was only a little fellow; but the second, which arrived at the Second Show at Ypres, gave me such a stiff leg that I am only an old crock now.  I was second-in-command of an Infantry Battalion in those days.  In these, I am only a peripatetic Lipton.  However, I am lucky to be here at all:  I’ve had twenty-seven years’ service.  How old are you?”

“Twenty,” replied Cockerell.  He was too tired to feel as ashamed as he usually did at having to confess to the tenderness of his years.

The Major nodded thoughtfully.

“Yes,” he said; “I judged that would be about the figure.  My son would have been twenty this month, only—­he was at Neuve Chapelle.  He was very like you in appearance—­very.  His mother would have been interested to meet you.  You might as well take a nap for half an hour.  I have two more calls to make, and we shan’t get home till nearly seven.  Lean on me, old man.  I’ll see you don’t tumble overboard ...”

So Lieutenant Cockerell, conqueror of the Kidney Bean, fell asleep, his head resting, with scandalous disregard for military etiquette, upon the shoulder of the stout Major.

V

An hour or two later, Number Nine Platoon, distended with concentrated nourishment and painfully straightening its cramped limbs, decanted itself from the lorry into a little cul-de-sac opening off the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau in St. Gregoire.  The name of the cul-de-sac was the Rue Gambetta.

Their commander, awake and greatly refreshed, looked round him and realised, with a sudden sense of uneasiness, that he was in familiar surroundings.  The lorry had stopped at the door of Number Five.

“I don’t suppose your Battalion will get back for some time,” said the Major.  “Tell your Sergeant to put your men into the stable behind this house—­there’s plenty of straw there—­and—­”

“Their own billet is just round the corner, sir,” replied Cockerell.  “They might as well go there, thank you.”

“Very good.  But come in with me yourself, and doss here for a few hours.  You can report to your C.O. later in the day, when he arrives.  This is my pied-a-terre,”—­rapping on the door.  “You won’t find many billets like it.  As you see, it stands in this little backwater, and is not included in any of the regular billeting areas of the town.  The Town Major has allotted it to me permanently.  Pretty decent of him, wasn’t it?  And Madame Vinot is a dear.  Here she is! Bonjour, Madame Vinot!  Avez-vous un feu—­er—­inflamme pour moi dans la chambre?” Evidently the Major’s French was on a par with Cockerell’s.