generals and their Staff blokes. Says they to me, they says, ‘Stop, for the generals are gassed and you must take us away.’
“I says to ’em, I says, ‘And what about the pepper, gentlemen, for the men in the trenches?’
“ ‘Pepper!’ cries a Staff officer, and as he spoke we took it, sir. Right into the back of the wagon they put a seventeen-inch shell, and the gift from the League of Beauty was all over the square. Sneeze!—you should have ’eard us. The Commander-in-Chief—’e sneezed the gas right out of ’im, and the Linseed Lancer ’e says to me, ’e says, ‘Jones, you’ve saved our lives.’
“ ‘Yus,’ I says, ‘you’re welcome to any little thing like that; but what about them poor trusting girls and their pepper?’ ”
It was at this moment, I subsequently gathered, that my subaltern hove in sight carrying two large mirrors under his arm and, finding where they were going, demanded a lift.
“Very quiet to-night,” he remarked, when he was stowed inside. “I’ve just been looting mirrors for periscopes.” •••••
