“I say, B——­,” I asked as I contemplated a hay-stack of things, “what’s the regulation allowance for an officer’s luggage?  I forget.”

“One hundred pounds.  Oh yes, you may laugh, old chap, but I got round the R.T. officer.  Christmas! you know.  And I can stow it in my billet.  Cheers the other fellows up, you know.”

B——­’s kit weighed, at a moderate computation, about a quarter of a ton, and included many things not to be found in the field-service regulations.  But it would never surprise me if I found a performing elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy Bears in his baggage.  He would gravely explain that it cheered the fellows up, you know.

“Major,” I said, “you are a ’carrier’!”

“Carter Paterson?” said the Major, with a glance at his luggage.

“No, I didn’t mean that.  You are not as quick in the uptake as usual, especially considering your medical qualifications.  What I meant was that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get typhoid and recover, but continue to propagate the germs long after they become immune from them themselves.  You’re diffusing a gaiety which you no longer feel.”

It was a bold shot, and if we hadn’t been pretty old friends it would have been an impertinence.  The Major put his arm in mine and took me aside, so that the subaltern should not hear.  “You’ve hit the bull’s-eye, old chap,” he said, in a low voice.  “But don’t give me away.  Come into the carriage.”

He was strangely silent as we sat facing each other in the compartment, each of us conscious of a hundred things to say, and saying none of them.  The train might start at any moment, and such things as we did say were trivial irrelevancies.  Suddenly he pulled out a pocket-book, and showed me a photograph.

“My wife and Pat—­you’ve never seen Pat, I think?  We christened her Patricia, you know?”

It was the photograph of a laughing child, with an aureole of curls, aged, I should say, about two.

“Pat sent me this,” the Major said, producing a large woollen comforter.  She had sent it for Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the Field Ambulance.  I handed back the photograph, and B——­ studied it intently for some minutes before replacing it in his pocket-book.  Suddenly he leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way.  “I say, old chap, write to my wife!”

“But, my dear fellow, I’ve never met her except once.  She must have quite forgotten who I am.”

“I know.  But write and tell her you saw me off, and that I was at the top of my form.  Merry and bright, you know.”

We looked at each other for a moment; and I promised.

There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch of the couplings, as C——­ sprang in.  I grasped B——­’s hand, and jumped on to the footboard of the moving train.

“Good-bye, old chap.”

“Good-bye, old man.”

B——­ had gone to the front.  I never saw him again.