one
for the first-aid packet, which is used for tobacco; two inside the
greatcoat in front; two outside it on each side, with flaps; three in
the trousers, and even three and a half, counting the little one in
front.

"I'll bet a compass on it," says Farfadet.

"And I, my bits of tinder."

"I," says Tirloir, "I'll bet a teeny whistle that my wife sent me when
she said, 'If you're wounded in the battle you must whistle, so that
your comrades will come and save your life.'"

We laugh at the artless words. Tulacque intervenes, and says
indulgently to Tiloir, "They don't know what war is back there; and if
you started talking about the rear, it'd be you that'd talk rot."

"We won't count that pocket," says Salavert, "it's too small. That
makes ten."

"In the jacket, four. That only makes fourteen after all."

"There are the two cartridge pockets, the two new ones that fasten with
straps."

"Sixteen," says Salavert.

"Now, blockhead and son of misery, turn my jacket back. You haven't
counted those two pockets. Now then, what more do you want? And yet
they're just in the usual place. They're your civilian pockets, where
you shoved your nose-rag, your tobacco, and the address where you'd got
to deliver your parcel when you were a messenger."

"Eighteen!" says Salavert, as grave as a judge. "There are eighteen,
and no mistake; that's done it."

At this point in the conversation, some one makes a series of noisy
stumbles on the stones of the threshold with the sound of a horse
pawing the ground--and blaspheming. Then, after a silence, the barking
of a sonorous and authoritative voice--"Hey, inside there! Getting
ready? Everything must be fixed up this evening and packed tight and
solid, you know. Going into the first line this time, and we may have a
hot time of it."

"Right you are, right you are, mon adjutant." heedless voices answer.

"How do you write 'Arnesse'?" asks Benech, who is on all fours, at work
with a pencil and an envelope. While Cocon spells "Ernest" for him and
the voice of the vanished adjutant is heard afar repeating his
harangue, Blaire picks up the thread, and says--

"You should always, my children--listen to what I'm telling you--put
your drinking-cup in your pocket. I've tried to stick it everywhere
else, but only the pocket's really practical, you take my word. If
you're in marching order, or if you've doffed your kit to navigate the
trenches either, you've always got it under your fi