ked sympathetically.

"Aggie? Funny thing, I was just thinking of her. She fair dotes on
'em. We had a day at Southend just before the war----"

He launched into anecdote. His companions listened, Phineas ironically
carrying out his theory of adaptability, Doggie with finer instinct.
It appeared there had been an altercation over right of choice with an
itinerant vendor in which, to Aggie's admiration, Mo had come off
triumphant.

"You see," he explained, "being in the fish trade myself, I could spot
the winners."

James Marmaduke Trevor, of Denby Hall, laughed and slapped him on the
back, and said indulgently: "Good old Mo!"

At the little school-house they stopped to gossip with some of their
friends who were billeted there, and they sang the praises of the
Veuve Morin's barn.

"I wonder you don't have the house full of orficers, if it's so
wonderful," said some one.

An omniscient corporal in the confidence of the quartermaster
explained that the landlady being ill in bed, and the place run by a
young girl, the house had been purposely missed. Doggie drew a breath
of relief at the news and attributed Madame Morin's malady to the
intervention of a kindly providence. Somehow he did not fancy officers
having the run of the house.

They strolled on and came to a forlorn little _Debit de Tabac_,
showing in its small window some clay pipes and a few fly-blown
picture post-cards. Now Doggie, in spite of his training in adversity,
had never resigned himself to "Woodbines," and other such brands
supplied to the British Army, and Egyptian and Turkish being beyond
his social pale, he had taken to smoking French Regie tobacco, of
which he laid in a stock whenever he had the chance. So now he entered
the shop, leaving Phineas and Mo outside. As they looked on French
cigarettes with sturdy British contempt, they were not interested in
Doggie's purchases. A wan girl of thirteen rose from behind the
counter.

"_Vous desirez, monsieur?_"

Doggie stated his desire. The girl was calculating the price of the
packets before wrapping them up, when his eyes fell upon a neat little
pile of cornets in a pigeon-hole at the back. They directly suggested
to him one of the great luminous ideas of his life. It was only
afterwards that he realized its effulgence. For the moment he was
merely concerned with the needs of a poor old woman who had sighed
lamentably over an empty paper of comfort.

"Do you sell snuff?"

"But yes, mons