“That’s all very nice,” said the Stunt Pilot, “but the question at present before the meeting is how are we poor beggars to get any leave?”

“It’s no good blaming me,” returned the Adjutant blandly.  “Command Orders are Command Orders.”

There was a brief silence, and then the Stunt Pilot lifted up his voice and spoke eloquently about the War Office and Brass Hats generally.  He said that they had hearts of granite and were strangers to all loving-kindness.  Their days were spent in idleness in the Metropolis (so said the Stunt Pilot), while he and his fellows drove rotten ’buses for hours together over the beastliest district in Europe.  Of an evening the Carlton and the Piccadilly, the Bing Boys and the Bing Girls, all the delights of London were ready to their hands, while poor devils like himself, shorn of leave, were condemned to languish in a moth-eaten Mess in the society of such people as the Adjutant.  Where was the sense in it, where the justice, and when the deuce were they, any of them, going to get a chance at the bath-room?

The Adjutant regarded him with amused pity.

“The fact of it is,” he observed, “you people have been absolutely spoilt over leave.  When I was in the Infantry we used to consider three or four days in six months quite handsome.”

The Stunt Pilot inquired sarcastically whether he meant three or four days’ work or three or four days’ leave.

“I don’t mind saying,” pursued the Adjutant, ignoring this sally, “at the risk of making myself unpopular, that personally I think it’s a very good thing that leave has been cut down.  My own opinion is that in the past there’s been a lot too much leave flying about.  Running up and down to London on leave isn’t going to help beat the Germans.  What we’ve got to do if we want to win this War is to—­”

At this moment the C.O. entered and put down a hockey-stick in the corner.

“Thanks for the stick, Jervis,” he said, and turned to go.  “By the way, shall I see you at the orderly-room tomorrow before you go?  What train are you catching?”

The Adjutant hesitated for the fraction of a second.

“Well, Sir,” he said, “I thought of taking the 9.5.”

“I see,” said the C.O.  “Right-o.  You won’t be away longer than forty-eight hours, I suppose?”

“Oh, no,” said the Adjutant.  “That’ll do well, Sir.”

A brief astonished silence followed the C.O.’s departure, a silence broken by the excited tones of the Stunt Pilot.

“The 9.5?” he cried.  “Are you going to London?”

The Adjutant lit a cigarette with some deliberation.

“Only just for forty-eight hours,” he remarked.

“Forty-eight hours!” gasped the indignant Pilot; then, raising his voice to surmount the din, “Forty-eight hours’ leave in London, and you’ve just been pouring out hot air about—­”

“Leave?” interrupted the Adjutant, in pained surprise.  “What d’you mean by leave?  I’m going on duty.”