Many arms of the Service are grouped round the little marble-topped tables, for the district is stiff with British troops, and promises to grow stiffer.  In fact, so persistently are the eagles gathering together upon this, the edge of the fighting line, that rumour is busier than ever.  The Big Push holds redoubled sway in our thoughts.  The First Hundred Thousand are well represented, for the whole Scottish Division is in the neighbourhood.  Beside the glengarries there are countless flat caps—­line regiments, territorials, gunners, and sappers.  The Army Service Corps is there in force, recruiting exhausted nature from the strain of dashing about the countryside in motor-cars.  The R.A.M.C. is strongly represented, doubtless to test the purity of the refreshment provided.  Even the Staff has torn itself away from its arduous duties for the moment, as sundry red tabs testify.  In one corner sit four stout French civilians, playing a mysterious card-game.

At the very next table we find ourselves among friends.  Here are Major Kemp, also Captain Blaikie.  They are accompanied by Ayling, Bobby Little, and Mr. Waddell.  The battalion came out of trenches yesterday, and for the first time found itself in urban billets.  For the moment haylofts and wash-houses are things of the dim past.  We are living in real houses, sleeping in real beds, some with sheets.

To this group enters unexpectedly Captain Wagstaffe.

“Hallo, Wagger!” says Blaikie.  “Back already?”

“Your surmise is correct,” replies Wagstaffe, who has been home on leave.  “I got a wire yesterday at lunch-time—­in the Savoy, of all places!  Every one on leave has been recalled.  We were packed like herrings on the boat.  Garcon, biere—­the brunette kind!”

“Tell us all about London,” says Ayling hungrily.  “What does it look like?  Tell us!”

We have been out here for the best part of five months now.  Leave opened a fortnight ago, amid acclamations—­only to be closed again within a few days.  Wagstaffe was one of the lucky few who slipped through the blessed portals.  He now sips his beer and delivers his report.

“London is much as usual.  A bit rattled over Zeppelins—­they have turned out even more street lamps—­but nothing to signify.  Country districts crawling with troops.  All the officers appear to be colonels.  Promotion at home is more rapid than out here.  Chin, chin!” Wagstaffe buries his face in his glass mug.

“What is the general attitude,” asked Mr. Waddell, “towards the war?”

“Well, one’s own friends are down in the dumps.  Of course it’s only natural, because most of them are in mourning.  Our losses are much more noticeable at home than abroad, somehow.  People seemed quite surprised when I told them that things out here are as right as rain, and that our troops are simply tumbling over one another, and that we don’t require any comic M.P.’s sent out to cheer us up.  The fact is, some people read the papers too much.  At the present moment the London press is, not to put too fine a point on it, making a holy show of itself.  I suppose there’s some low-down political rig at the back of it all, but the whole business must be perfect jam for the Bosches in Berlin.”