“My dear old lad,” he said, briskly, “this must be remedied!  Oh, positively!  This must be remedied at once!  I suppose my things wouldn’t fit you?  No.  Well, I tell you what.  We’ll wangle something from my father-in-law.  Old Brewster, you know, the fellow who runs the Cosmopolis.  His’ll fit you like the paper on the wall, because he’s a tubby little blighter, too.  What I mean to say is, he’s also one of those sturdy, square, fine-looking chappies of about the middle height.  By the way, where are you stopping these days?”

“Nowhere just at present.  I thought of taking one of those self-contained Park benches.”

“Are you broke?”

“Am I!”

Archie was concerned.

“You ought to get a job.”

“I ought.  But somehow I don’t seem able to.”

“What did you do before the war?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“Forgotten!”

“Forgotten.”

“How do you mean—­forgotten?  You can’t mean—­forgotten?”

“Yes.  It’s quite gone.”

“But I mean to say.  You can’t have forgotten a thing like that.”

“Can’t I!  I’ve forgotten all sorts of things.  Where I was born.  How old I am.  Whether I’m married or single.  What my name is—­”

“Well, I’m dashed!” said Archie, staggered.  “But you remembered about giving me a bit of sausage outside St. Mihiel?”

“No, I didn’t.  I’m taking your word for it.  For all I know you may be luring me into some den to rob me of my straw hat.  I don’t know you from Adam.  But I like your conversation—­especially the part about eating—­and I’m taking a chance.”

Archie was concerned.

“Listen, old bean.  Make an effort.  You must remember that sausage episode?  It was just outside St. Mihiel, about five in the evening.  Your little lot were lying next to my little lot, and we happened to meet, and I said ‘What ho!’ and you said ‘Halloa!’ and I said ’What ho!  What ho!’ and you said ‘Have a bit of sausage?’ and I said ’What ho!  What ho!  What ho!’”

“The dialogue seems to have been darned sparkling but I don’t remember it.  It must have been after that that I stopped one.  I don’t seem quite to have caught up with myself since I got hit.”

“Oh!  That’s how you got that scar?”

“No.  I got that jumping through a plate-glass window in London on Armistice night.”

“What on earth did you do that for?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“But if you can remember a thing like that, why can’t you remember your name?”

“I remember everything that happened after I came out of hospital.  It’s the part before that’s gone.”

Archie patted him on the shoulder.

“I know just what you want.  You need a bit of quiet and repose, to think things over and so forth.  You mustn’t go sleeping on Park benches.  Won’t do at all.  Not a bit like it.  You must shift to the Cosmopolis.  It isn’t half a bad spot, the old Cosmop.  I didn’t like it much the first night I was there, because there was a dashed tap that went drip-drip-drip all night and kept me awake, but the place has its points.”