billets at a shady little spot not far
behind the British trenches which was then known as 'Quality Street,'"
he continued, "and, as I not unreasonably supposed that the smartest and
most intelligent bloke in the regiment would be sent to 'elp the
colonel, I requested the Dog's Leg (Anglice--lance-corporal) to point
out his abode to me.

"'Ask the Quarter Bloke over along in the end cottage, old sport,' he
said with a grin, 'he'll be most 'appy, I've no doubt to personally
conduct to the old pot-an-pan, and while you're there just ask him to
let you have that jug of defaulters' extra milk for me.' It was a
'wheeze' among the boys to send a poor innocent bloke off for this
milk. The point of the 'wheeze' is in the fact that as defaulters are
chaps doing jankers (Anglice--punishment) they are hardly likely to get
any extra milk dished out to them. I did not see the joke at first; but
on application to that autocratic beggar--Quartermaster King was his
tally--he fully explained things to me in that witheringly sarcastic
manner peculiar to sergeant-majors and quarter-blokes.

"'Defaulter's milk?' echoed he. 'Why, you lop-eared leper, you've got
corpuscular fool wrote as plain as a motor lorry number all over your
ugly face. If I wasn't sure that you was not more of a born idiot than a
ruddy knave, etc., etc., etc., I would have you slick in mush before
your feet could touch the ground!'

"Much crest-fallen, and terribly mortified, I returned to the cottage
which had been selected to shelter me noble self, only to be met there
with a volley of derisive laughter, repeated demands for the jug of
Defaulter's milk, and questions about the quarter bloke's health.

"'A cat may look at a _King_,' said the Dog's Leg, and fell backwards
out of the open window at his own joke, breaking 'is collar bone. One
should never forget, at every time, as the Scriptures say, that pride
allus goes before a fall, and that all the King's 'orses and all the
King's men can't not even pick 'im up again!"

My murmured compliments on his amazing aptness in the knowledge of Holy
Writ were checked by a sudden discovery that my best silver cigarette
case had vanished from the table.

"Which of you civilians has stole the gentleman's silver case?"

This question, uttered not in the friendliest possible terms, was
addressed to a young gentleman with a very pimply face, and
kaleidoscopic coloured socks, of the genus Slacker, who had suddenly
found the