d me he was a
Second Lieutenant in the Army, temporary Lieutenant, acting Captain.
All these ranks get a different rate of allowance. Which of the three
was George in fact?

"A man of your age ought to know better," I said.

We were half-an-hour late for breakfast, and even so George hadn't got
to the station of departure, as far as A.F.O. 1771 was concerned.

I determined to devote the morning to the matter, clearing the court
for the purpose. Our Mr. Booth, however, who is intolerably precise
and accurate in these matters, had profited by my absence at breakfast
to collect a folio of relevant Orders and Instructions, numbered one
to seventy-three consecutively.

It all sounds so simple, doesn't it? You get so many francs a day for
subsistence, and so many francs a night for accommodation, in France;
so many lire a day for subsistence, and so many lire a night for
accommodation, in Italy. Ah yes, but you don't know George when he is
in action. Not content with travelling in the dark, and so subsisting
by night when he ought to be accommodated, and being accommodated by
day when he ought to be subsisting, he could never make up his mind
to stay in the same country for two days together. As to his constant
movements from one country to the other, three times he had supposed
he had finished with Italy and was due back in France; each time
he had got comfortably across the frontier into France he had been
recalled to Italy. Never once had he the sense to cross the frontier
on the stroke of midnight, and so make a complete twenty-four hours
of it on each side, and all the time the rate of exchange was varying
by a fraction. But, as George said, it wasn't himself who was
manipulating the rate of exchange as between the two countries, and
courtesy to allied nations prevented him from manipulating the trains.

It was towards teatime when he satisfied me of his own innocence on
these points; but don't run away with the idea that by this time we
were well on with the business. We had barely as much as started. How
are you to fix the "date of journey" in such a manner as to give the
traveller a clear night for accommodation in one country, or a clear
day for subsistence in another, when he leaves his home at 5.15 P.M.,
arrives at the end of the first stage at 6.10 P.M., sleeps in a hotel
till 11 P.M., gets in the train at thirty-five minutes past, crosses
the frontier at 2 P.M. on the following day, arrives at his Italian
d