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Then there is the Fairy Godmother Department, which supplies us with unexpected treats.  It is the smallest department on Olympus, and, like most philanthropic institutions, is rather unaccountable in the manner in which it distributes its favours.  It is somewhat hampered in its efforts, too, by the Practical Joke Department, which appears to exercise a sort of general right of interference all over Olympus.  For instance, the Fairy Godmother Department decrees that officers from Indian regiments, who were home on leave when the War broke out and were commandeered for service with the Expeditionary Force, shall continue to draw pay on the Indian scale, which is considerably higher than that which prevails at home.  So far, so good.  But the Practical Joke Department hears of this, and scents an opportunity, in the form of “deductions.”  It promptly bleeds the beneficiaire of certain sums per day, for quarters, horse allowance, forage, and the like.  It is credibly reported that one of these warriors, on emerging from a week’s purgatory in a Belgian trench, found that his accommodation therein had been charged against him, under the head of “lodgings,” at the rate of two shillings and threepence a night!

But sometimes the Fairy Godmother Department gets a free hand.  Like a benevolent maiden aunt, she unexpectedly drops a twenty-pound note into your account at Cox’s Bank, murmuring something vague about “additional outfit allowance”; and as Mr. Cox makes a point of backing her up in her little secret, you receive a delightful surprise next time you open your pass-book.

She has the family instinct for detail, too, this Fairy Godmother.  Perhaps the electric light in your bedroom fails, and for three days you have to sit in the dark or purchase candles.  An invisible but observant little cherub notes this fact; and long afterwards a postal order for tenpence flutters down upon you from Olympus, marked “light allowance.”  Once Bobby Little received a mysterious postal order for one-and-fivepence.  It was in the early days of his novitiate, before he had ceased to question the workings of Providence.  So he made inquiries, and after prolonged investigation discovered the source of the windfall.  On field service an officer is entitled to a certain sum per day as “field allowance.”  In barracks, however, possessing a bedroom and other indoor comforts, he receives no such gratuity.  Now Bobby had once been compelled to share his room for a few nights with a newly-joined and homeless subaltern.  He was thus temporarily rendered the owner of only half a bedroom.  Or, to put it another way, only half of him was able to sleep in barracks.  Obviously, then, the other half was on field service, and Bobby was therefore entitled to half field allowance.  Hence the one-and-fivepence.  I tell you, little escapes them on Olympus.  So does much, but that is another story.

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