Some of the officers of B and D Companies were drinking together the following day in a hole on the Bluff, when the Brigade Bombing Officer burst in among us, and seized a mug.

“Thanks.  I will,” he said.  “Just a spot of whisky.  Well, here’s to you.  Cheerioh!”

He drank half the mug, and addressed me.

“Ray, you have found favour in the sight of the General.  He wants you for his A.D.C., and won’t be happy till he gets you.  He thinks you a pretty and a proper child and fairly clean. What abaht it?”

“Good Lord,” said I.  “I don’t know what an A.D.C. is!  What do I do?”

“Oh, see that the old gentleman is fed.  And cut out the saucy girls from ‘La Vie Parisienne,’ and decorate the mess walls with them.  And—­and all that sort of thing.”

“Go on, Ray,” urged Doe.  “Of course you’ll be it.  Put him down for the job.  I wish the old general had fallen in love with me.’

“I don’t mind trying it,” I said.  “Anything for a change.”

“Right,” replied the Bombing Officer.  “Ray, having been four days with a company of the East Cheshires, feels in need of a change.  He desires to better himself.  Now for the next point.  I’m chucking this Bombing Officer stunt.  It’s too dangerous.  Both my predecessors were killed, and yesterday the Turk threw a bomb at me.  Now, is there anybody tired of his life and laden with his sin?  Anyone want to commit suicide?  Anyone feel a call?  Anyone want to do the bloody hero, and be Brigade Bombing Officer?”

Doe blushed at once.

“I’ll have a shot at it....  Anything for a change,” he added apologetically.

“That’s the spirit that made England great!” said the Bombing Officer.  “I do like keenness.  Splendid!  Ray goes to the softest job in the Army, and Doe, stout fellow, to the damnedst.  Thanks:  just another little spot.  Cheerioh!”

In name my new character was that of Brigade Ammunition Officer, but it amounted, as the Bombing Officer had said, to being A.D.C. to the Brigadier.  I was entirely miserable in it.  Painfully shy of the old general and his staff-officers, I never spoke at meals in the solemn Headquarters Mess unless I had carefully rehearsed before what I was going to say.  And, when I said it, I saw how foolish it sounded.

And Major Hardy—­who, you will remember, was our Brigade Major—­used to be unnecessarily funny about my youth, fixing me with his monocle over the evening dinner-table and asking me if I were allowed to sit up to dinner at home.  I imagine he thought he was humorous.

Grand old Major Hardy!  I must not speak lightly of him here.  It is only because I have now to finish his story that I have mentioned my regrettable declension on to the staff.