It was worse still when it came to a still more useful substitute, the camp equivalent of the teacup.  In the first place we abolish the saucer, for the simple reason that we have no earthly use for it in camp.  We take tin mugs with sloping sides and wire bucket handles.  They fit into one another in the same accommodating way as the eating dishes.  Gertrude was nearly put off this device altogether by Basil’s remark that he had only seen them in use in poulterers’ shops, where they are put under hares’ noses....

 “Basil, you, you monster,” cried Gertrude, and I had to push those tin
 mugs as though I had been a traveller interested in the sale of them.

The drinking of hot tea out of these mugs is quite a beautiful art.  You hold the wire handle between finger and thumb and put the little finger at the edge of the bottom rim.  It is thus able to tilt the mug to the exact angle which is most convenient for drinking.  When Gertrude had learnt the trick, she became perfectly enamoured of the mugs.  She sometimes brings one out at ordinary afternoon tea and insists that the tea is ever so much better drunk thus than out of spode.

Smaller mugs of the same shape do for egg-cups, and the egg-spoons I take to camp are the bone ones, seldom asked for but easy to get in most oil-and-colour shops.  Dessert spoons and forks and table knives are of the usual pattern, but the former can be had in aluminium and therefore much lighter than Britannia metal.

The camping-out valise is by all means the rucksack.  Never the knapsack.  I am almost ashamed to say this, because as far as my knowledge goes the knapsack is now obsolete.  It may be, however, that it lingers here and there.  If you see one, buy it for a museum if you like but not for use.  The bundle should be allowed to fit itself to the back, as it does in a canvas bag.  Suppose now that you fix the V point of a pair of braces somewhere near the top of the sack and bringing the webs over your shoulders, fix them, nicely adjusted, to the lower corners of the sack, it will ride quite comfortably upon your back—­that is, you have made it from a plain sack into a rucksack or back-sack.  Get or make as many good large strong ones as you have shoulders in the party to carry them.  Have them made of a waterproof canvas, green or brown, to reeve up tight with strong cord passed through a series of eyelet-holes and, if you would be quite certain of keeping out the rain, with a little hood to cover the reeved bag end.

The great bulk of your luggage you will generally find it best to carry by wheeling it on a bicycle.  Spread your ground-sheet on the floor.  On that lay your blankets, doubled so as to make a smaller square, tent, mattress cover and bed suits on that, then your camping utensils and all other paraphernalia and roll the whole up into a sausage about five feet long, when the loose ends of the ground-sheet