here watching you do all
the work."

The sergeant straightened himself slowly from the bench and looked at
Courtenay, a quizzical smile dawning on his thin lips. "Why now,
Loo-tenant," he said, "there's no need to get het up none. I know you
Britishers hate to be thought inquisitive--'bad form,' ain't it!--but I
didn't figure it thataway, not any. I'd forgot for a minute the
difference 'tween--" He broke off and looked down at his sleeve,
nodding to the stripes and then to the lieutenant's star. "An' if you
don't mind I'll keep on forgetting it meantime. 'Twon't hurt
discipline, seeing nobody's here anyway. Y' see," he went on, stooping
to his work again, "I'm not used to military manners an' customs. A
year ago if you'd told me I'd be a soldier, _and_ in the British Army,
I'd ha' thought you clean loco."

Courtenay laughed. "There's a good many in the same British Army can
say the same as you," he said.

"I was in London when the flare-up came, an' bein' interested in
business I didn't ball up my intellect with politics an' newspaper war
talk. So a cable I had from the firm hit me wallop, an' plumb dazed me.
It said, 'Try secure war contract. One hundred full-powered available
now. Two hundred delivery within month.' Then I began to sit up an'
take notice. Y' see, I'm in with a big firm of auto builders--mebbe you
know 'em--Rawbon an' Spedding, the Rawbon bein' my dad? No? Well,
anyhow, I got the contract, got it so quick it made my head swim. Gee,
that fellow in the War Office was buyin' up autos like I'd buy
pipe-lights. The hundred lorries was shipped over, an' I saw 'em safe
through the specified tests an' handed 'em over. Same with the next two
hundred, an' this"--tapping his toe on the floor--"is one of 'em right
here."

"I see how the lorry got here," said Courtenay, hugely interested, "but
I don't see how you've managed to be aboard. You and a suit of khaki
and a sergeant's stripes weren't all in the contract, I suppose?"

"Nope," said the sergeant, "not in the written one, mebbe. But I took a
fancy to seein' how the engines made out under war conditions, an'
figured I might get some useful notes on it for the firm, so I fixed it
to come right along."

"But how?" asked Courtenay--"if that's not a secret."

"Why, that guy in the testin' sheds was plump tickled when I told him
my notion. He fixed it all, and me suddenly discoverin' I was mistook
for a Canadian I just said 'M-m-m' when anybody asked me. I