"_I am writing this by the firelight, and if only you were here we'd draw up our chairs close and p'r'aps----_" "My Aunt Agatha sent it to me," continued the voice of the importunist. "Read what's written on the back." The Sub, who was what is called a good mess-mate, turned the pasteboard over rather absent-mindedly. "_Love your enemies_," was written in angular spidery handwriting across the inoffensive surface of the card. The Sub was twenty, but he had known four years of warfare against the Powers of Evil, which we call Germany for short. "Any relation of Lansdowne or Ramsay Macdonald, your Aunt Agatha?" he inquired, and tossed the card back, to return instantly to a firelit twilight and "p'r'aps." The Surgeon looked round the Mess in search of a fresh confidant. The First Lieutenant sat hunched up on his right, holding a bunch of sheets of paper clenched in his hand, and staring at the stove with unseeing eyes. "Here, Number One," said Aunt Agatha's nephew, and smote his neighbour on the knee. "You look as if you wanted brightening up. Read that, my lad! Both sides. Every picture tells a story." The Lieutenant turned eyes like those of a startled horse upon the speaker. "Eh?" he said. He, too, had come back a long way to answer a living voice. "Read that, my pippin." The Lieutenant read obediently, turning the card backwards and forwards in his fingers as if looking for something that wasn't there. The crumpled sheets of his letter dropped to the deck and lay unheeded. Then abruptly he laughed; it was not a laugh common to Englishmen, and so disconcerting was the sound that two or three faces lifted from the preoccupation of letter or illustrated paper, and tranquil eyes stared curiously. "My God!" said the First Lieutenant. "That's the best joke--the best joke----" His voice dropped low. He handed back the Christmas-card and fumbled blindly for the fallen sheets of his letter. One by one he straightened them on his knees, smoothing out the creases mechanically. "The best joke----" He rose to his feet with something in his white face that jerked the medical man instantly upright beside him.