eautiful new boots had
diverted his companion.

"Couldn't I have this furnished at my own expense? A carpet and a
proper bed, and a few pictures----"

"I wouldn't try."

"Why not?"

"Some of it might get broken--not quite accidentally."

"But surely," gasped Doggie, "the soldiers would not be allowed to
come in here and touch my furniture?"

"It seems," said the subaltern, after a bewildered stare, "that you
have quite a lot to learn."

Doggie had. The subaltern reported a new kind of animal to the mess.
The mess saw to it that Doggie should be crammed with information--but
information wholly incorrect and misleading, which added to his many
difficulties. When his ton of kit arrived he held an unwilling
reception in the hut and found himself obliged to explain to gravely
curious men the use for which the various articles were designed.

"This, I suppose, is a new type of gas-mask?"

No. It was a patent cooker. Doggie politely showed how it worked. He
also demonstrated that a sleeping-bag was not a kit-sack of a size
unauthorized by the regulations, and that a huge steel-pointed
walking-stick had nothing to do with agriculture.

He was very weary of his visitors by the time they had gone. The next
day the Adjutant advised him to scrap the lot. So sorrowfully he sent
back most of his purchases to London.

Then the Imp of Mischance brought as a visitor to the mess, a
subaltern from another regiment who belonged to Doggie's part of the
country.

"Why--I'm blowed if it isn't Doggie Trevor!" he exclaimed carelessly.
"How d'ye do, Doggie?"

So thenceforward he was known in the regiment by the hated name.

There were rags in which, as he was often the victim, he was forced to
join. His fastidiousness loathed the coarse personal contact of arms
and legs and bodies. His undeveloped strength could not cope with the
muscle of his young brother barbarians. Aching with the day's fatigue,
he would plead, to no avail, to be left alone. Compared with these
feared and detested scraps, he considered, in after-times, battles to
be agreeable recreations.

Had he been otherwise competent, he might have won through the teasing
and the ragging of the mess. No one disliked him. He was
pleasant-mannered, good-natured, and appeared to bear no malice. True,
his ignorance not only of the ways of the army but of the ways of
their old hearty world, was colossal, his mode of expression rather
that of a precise old church dignitary