needn't be about the Western Front."

"Unfortunately that's the only front I know anything about."

"I thought writers used their imagination sometimes," said Celia to
anybody who might happen to be listening.

"Oh, well, if you put it like that," I said, "I suppose I must."

So I settled down to a story about the Salonica Front.

The scene of my story was laid in an old clay hut amid the wattles.

"What are wattles?" asked Celia, when I told her the good news.

"Local colour," I explained. "They grow in Bulgaria."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure that these ones did; I don't know about any others."

Of course more local colour was wanted than a mere wattle or two. It was
necessary therefore for my Bulgarians always to go about in _comitadjis_.
Celia thought that these were a kind of native trouser laced at the knee.
She may be right. My own impression is that they are a species of
platoon. Anyhow the Bulgars always went about in them.

There was a fierce fight which raged round the old clay hut in the
wattles. The Greeks shouted "[Greek: Tupto tuptomai]" The Serbs, for
reasons into which I need not enter, were inarticulate with rage.
With the French and British I had, of course, no difficulty, and the
Bulgars (fortunately) were content with hoarse guttural noises. It was a
fierce fight while it lasted, and I was sorry when it was over, because
for the first time I began to feel at home with my story. I need not say
that many a Bulgar had licked the wattles before I had finished.

Unfortunately something else happened before I had finished.

"What do you think?" cried Celia, bursting into my room one evening, just
when I was wondering whether my readers would expect to know more of the
heroine's native costume than that it was "simple yet becoming."

"Wait a moment," I said.

"It's too good to wait," said Celia excitedly. "Bulgaria has
surrendered."

Celia may be a good patriot, but she lacks the artistic temperament.

"Oh, has she?" I said bitterly. "Then she's jolly well spoilt my story."

"The one about the wattles?"

"Yes."

"Tut-tuttles," said Celia frivolously.

Well, I wasn't going to waste my wattles. With great presence of mind I
decided to transfer my story to the Palestine Front.

Under a hard blue sky of intense brilliance the old clay hut stood among
the wattles. A _wadi_ ran by the side of it; not a small Turkish dog, as
Celia thought, but--well, everybody knows what a _wadi_ is. The ba