That wakes romance in Metropolitan breasts,
Drawing our young war-workers out of town
To seek the glamour of the country lanes
Under the silvery beams to lovers dear. O.S.

* * * * *

FORCE OF HABIT.

The fact that George had been eighteen months in Gallipoli, Egypt and
France, without leave home till now, should have warned me. As it was
I merely found myself gasping "Shell-shock!"

We were walking in a crowded thoroughfare, and George was giving all
the officers he met the cheeriest of "Good mornings." It took people
in two ways. Those on leave, blushing to think they had so far
forgotten their B.E.F. habits as to pass a brother-officer without
some recognition, replied hastily by murmuring the conventional "How
are you?" into some innocent civilian's face some yards behind us.
Mere stay-at-homes, on the other hand, surprised into believing that
they ought to know him, stopped and became quite effusive. As far as
I can remember George accepted three invitations to dinner from total
strangers rather than explain, and I was included in one of them.

We were for the play that night and I foresaw difficulties at the
public telephone, and George's first remark of "Hullo, hullo, is that
Signals? Put me through to His Majesty's," confirmed my apprehensions.

Half-an-hour of this kind of thing produced in me a strong desire for
peace and seclusion. A taxi would have solved my difficulty (had I
been able to solve the taxi difficulty first), but George himself
anticipated me by suddenly holding up a private car and asking for a
lift. I could have smiled at this further lapse had not the owner,
a detestable club acquaintance whom I had been trying to keep at a
distance for years, been the driver. He was delighted, and I was borne
away conscious of twenty years' work undone by a single stroke.

Peace and seclusion at the club afforded no relief however. George was
really very trying at tea. He accused the bread because the crust had
not a hairy exterior (generally accumulated by its conveyance in a
blanket or sandbag). He ridiculed the sugar ration--I don't believe he
has ever been short in his life; and the resources of the place were
unequal to the task of providing tea of sufficient strength to admit
of the spoon being stood upright in it--a consistency to which, he
said, he had grown accustomed. When I left him he was bullying the
hall-porter of the club for a so