whole army. I was thinking that ten minutes ago! . . . What's to be done? What in God's name is to be done?" A black crape veil seemed to drop across his vision . . . Liver . . .
Lieutenant Hotchkiss said with dignity:
"I'm going to the front. I'm going to the real front. I was passed A1 this morning. I am going to study the blood reactions of the service horse under fire."
"Well, you"re a damn good chap," Tietjens said. There was nothing to be done. The amazing activities of which Sylvia would be capable were just the thing to send laughter raging like fire through a cachinnating army. She could not, thank God, get into France: to that place. But she could make scandals in the papers that every Tommie read. There was no game of which she was not capable. That sort of pursuit was called "pulling the strings of shower-baths" in her circle of friends. Nothing. Nothing to be done. . . . The beastly hurricane lamp was smoking.
"I'll tell you what to do," he said to Lieutenant Hotchkiss.
Mackenzie had tossed his sheet of rhymes under his nose. Tietjens read: Death, moil, coil, breath . . . Saith—The dirty Cockney!" Oil, soil, wraith. . . .
"I'd be blowed," Mackenzie said with a vicious grin, "if I was going to give you rhymes you had suggested yourself . . ."
The officer said:
"I don't of course want to be a nuisance if you"re busy."
"It's no nuisance," Tietjens said. "It's what we're for. But I'd suggest that now and then you say 'sir'
