e popular now; it was getting better known
even in my time. But if it becomes popular it will lose its charm.
Monsieur and his family will no longer be able to shake hands with
every guest. There may be table-cloths. The hens--I always thought
they were the _poulets_ we ate fattened before our eyes--will be
banished, and some officious A.P.M. will put the place out of bounds,
suspecting it to be a haunt of vice. Its look and its smell, I admit,
would arouse suspicion in the mind of any conscientious A.P.M., but
Monsieur's patrons, if rough, were respectable people. Even the
A.S.C. officers were above reproach. They looked like men who were
satisfied at having discovered the best and cheapest dinner to be
got in that town. I doubt whether they had even appreciated the
eccentricities of the service.

In spite of our want of games and amusements, life in those camps was
pleasant and cheerful. We all had work to do, and not too many hours
of idleness. For me there were long walks with M., best and cheeriest
of comrades, whose spirits and energy never failed or flagged. We saw
a great deal of each other in those days until the time came at the
end of April, when he moved off to a cavalry brigade; a post into
which he was thrust because good horsemen are rare among chaplains.
There was always excellent company in my own mess and others. Nowhere
else have I met so many different kinds of men.

The regular soldiers, some of them old men, held themselves as a
separate caste a little aloof from the rest of us. It is not to be
wondered at. They were professionals, with a great tradition behind
them. We were amateurs, and, at times, inclined to be critical of old
customs and old ways. We came from every conceivable profession, and
before the war had been engaged in a hundred different activities.
Among us were men of real ability, who had made good in their own
way. I think the regular soldiers were a little bewildered sometimes.
They, almost as completely as we, were plunged into a new world. The
wonder is that they stood us as patiently as they did.

We had our mild jokes, and it was wonderful how long the mildest
jokes will last in circumstances like ours. There was a story of an
unfortunate private who was dragged before his colonel for failing to
salute a general, a general who should have been unmistakable. In
defence he said that he did not know it was a general.

"But," said the colonel, "you must have seen the red band