So to speak, bowed out, Peter made his way home.  In the Rue de Paris Julie passed him, sitting with a couple of other nurses in an ambulance motor-lorry, and she waved her hand to him.  The incident served to depress him still more, and he was a bit petulant as he entered the mess.  He flung his cap on the table, and threw himself into a chair.

“Well,” said Pennell, who was there, “on the peg all right?”

“Don’t be a fool!” said Peter sarcastically.  “I’m wanted on the Staff.  Haig can’t manage without me.  I’ve got to leave this perishing suburb and skip up to H.Q., and don’t you forget it, old dear.  I shall probably be a Major-General before you get your third pip.  Got that?”

Pennell took his pipe from his mouth.  “What’s in the wind now?” he demanded.

“Well, you might not have noticed it, but I’m a political and economic expert, and Haig’s fed up that you boys don’t tumble to the wisdom of the centuries as you ought.  Consequently I’ve got to instruct you.  I’m going to waltz around in a motor-car, probably with tabs up, and lecture.  And there aren’t to be any questions asked, for that’s subversive of discipline.”

“Good Lord, man, do talk sense!  What in the world do you mean?”

“I mean jolly well what I say, if you want to know, or something precious like it.  The blinking Army’s got dry-rot and revolutionary fever, and we may all be murdered in our little beds unless I put a shoulder to the wheel.  That’s a bit mixed, but it’ll stand.  I shall be churning out this thing by the yard in a little.”

“Any extra pay?” demanded Pennell anxiously.  “I can lecture on engineering, and would do for an extra sixpence.  Whisky’s going up, and I haven’t paid my last mess bill.”

“You haven’t, old son,” said Arnold, coming in, “and you’ve jolly well got to.  Here’s a letter for you, Graham.”

Peter glanced at the envelope and tore it open.  Pennell knocked his pipe out with feigned dejection.  “The fellow makes me sick, padre,” he said.  “He gets billets-doux every hour of the blessed day.”

Peter jumped up excitedly.  “This is better,” he said.  “It’s a letter from Langton at Rouen, a chap I met there who writes occasionally.  He’s been hauled in for this stunt himself, and is to go to Abbeville as well.  By Jove, I’ll go up with him if I can.  Give me some paper, somebody.  I’ll have to write to him at once, or we’ll boss it.”

“And make a will, and write to a dozen girls, I should think,” said Pennell.  “I don’t know what the blooming Army’s coming to.  Might as well chuck it and have peace, I think.  But meantime I’ve got to leave you blighted slackers to gad about the place, and go and do an honest day’s work. I don’t get Staff jobs and red tabs.  No; I help win the ruddy war, that’s all.  See you before you go, Graham, I suppose?  They’ll likely run the show for a day or two more without you.  There’ll be time for you to stand a dinner on the strength of it yet.”