thoughts in the smoking-room, for the evening was entirely pervaded with military effects that seemed to her the pranks of schoolboys. Indeed, after Cowley, who had by now quite a good skinful of liquor, had said to Tietjens:
"By Jove, I would not like to be you and a little bit on if old Blazes caught sight of you to-night," she said to Tietjens with real wonder:
"You don't mean to say that a gaga old fool like that could have any possible influence over you. . . . You!"
Tietjens said:
"Well, it's a troublesome business, all this. . . . "
She said that it so appeared to be, for before he could finish his sentence an orderly was at his elbow extending, along with a pencil, a number of dilapidated papers. Tietjens looked rapidly through them, signing one after the other and saying intermittently:
"It's a trying time." "We're massing troops up the line as fast as we can go." "And with an endlessly changing personnel. . . . " He gave a snort of exasperation and said to Cowley: "That horrible little Pitkins has got a job as bombing instructor. He can't march the draft. . . . Who the deuce am I to detail? Who the deuce is there? . . . You know all the little . . . " He stopped because the orderly could hear. A smart boy. Almost the only smart boy left him.
Cowley barged out of his seat and said he would telephone to the mess to see who was there. . . . Tietjens said to the boy:
"Sergeant-Major Morgan made out these returns of religions in the draft?"
The boy answered: "No, sir, I did. They're all
