, too," said Aaron.

"Right you are! We're all as right as ninepence--what? Good old sport!
Here's yours!" cried the Colonel.

"We shall have to be going up," said Arthur, wise in his generation.

As they went into the hall, Arthur suddenly put one arm round Aaron's
waist, and one arm round the Colonel's, and the three did a sudden
little barn-dance towards the stairs. Arthur was feeling himself quite
let loose again, back in his old regimental mess.

Approaching the foot of the stairs, he let go again. He was in that rosy
condition when united-we-stand. But unfortunately it is a complicated
job to climb the stairs in unison. The whole lot tends to fall
backwards. Arthur, therefore, rosy, plump, looking so good to eat, stood
still a moment in order to find his own neatly-slippered feet. Having
found them, he proceeded to put them carefully one before the other, and
to his enchantment found that this procedure was carrying him magically
up the stairs. The Colonel, like a drowning man, clutched feebly for the
straw of the great stair-rail--and missed it. He would have gone under,
but that Aaron's hand gripped his arm. So, orientating once more like
a fragile tendril, he reached again for the banister rail, and got it.
After which, lifting his feet as if they were little packets of sand
tied to his trouser buttons, he manipulated his way upwards. Aaron was
in that pleasant state when he saw what everybody else was doing and was
unconscious of what he did himself. Whilst tall, gaunt, erect, like a
murdered Hamlet resurrected in khaki, with the terrible black shutter
over his eye, the young Major came last.

Arthur was making a stern fight for his composure. His whole future
depended on it. But do what he would, he could not get the flushed,
pleased, mess-happy look off his face. The Colonel, oh, awful man, did
a sort of plump roly-poly-cake-walk, like a fat boy, right to the
very door of that santum-sanctorum, the library. Aaron was inwardly
convulsed. Even the Major laughed.

But Arthur stiffened himself militarily and cleared his throat. All four
started to compose themselves, like actors going on the stage, outside
that library door. And then Arthur softly, almost wistfully, opened and
held the door for the others to pass. The Colonel slunk meekly in, and
sat in a chair in the background. The Major stalked in expressionless,
and hovered towards the sofa where his wife sat.

There was a rather cold-water-down-your-