“Board or no Board, _I_ ’adn’t the nerve to stay at ’ome--not with mother chuckin’ ’erself round all three rooms like a rabbit every time the Gothas tried to get Victoria; an’ sister writin’ me aunts four pages about it next day. Not for _me_, thank you! till the war was over. So I slid out with a draft--they wasn’t particular in ’17, so long as the tally was correct--and I joined up again with our Circus somewhere at the back of Lar Pug Noy, I think it was.” Humberstall paused for some seconds and his brow wrinkled. “Then I--I went sick, or somethin’ or other, they told me; but I know _when_ I reported for duty, our Battery Sergeant Major says that I wasn’t expected back, an’--an’, one thing leadin’ to another--to cut a long story short--I went up before our Major--Major--I shall forget my own name next--Major----” “Never mind,” Anthony interrupted. “Go on! It’ll come back in talk!” “’Alf a mo’. ’Twas on the tip o’ my tongue then.” Humberstall dropped the polishing-cloth and knitted his brows again in most profound thought. Anthony turned to me and suddenly launched into a sprightly tale of his taxi’s collision with a Marble Arch refuge on a greasy day after a three-yard skid. “’Much damage?” I asked. “Oh no! Ev’ry bolt an’ screw an’ nut on the chassis strained; _but_ nothing carried away, you understand me, an’ not a scratch on the body. You’d never ’ave guessed a thing wrong till you took ’er in hand. It _was_ a wop too: ’ead-on--like this!” And he slapped his tactful little forehead to show what a knock it had been. “Did your Major dish you up much?” he went on over his shoulder to Humberstall who came out of his abstraction with a slow heave. “We-ell! He told me I wasn’t expected back either; an’ he said ’e couldn’t ’ang up the ’ole Circus till I’d rejoined; an’ he said that my ten-inch Skoda which I’d been Number Three of, before the dump went up at Eatables, had ’er full crowd. But, ’e said, as soon as a casualty occurred he’d remember me. ‘Meantime,’ says he, ‘I particularly want you for actin’ mess-waiter.’ “’Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ I says perfectly respectful; ‘but I didn’t exactly come back for _that_, sir.’” “‘Beggin’ _your_ pardon, ’Umberstall,’ says ’e, ‘but I ’appen to command the Circus! Now, you’re a sharp-witted man,’ he says; ‘an’ what we’ve suffered from fool-waiters in Mess ’as been somethin’ cruel. You’ll take on, from now--under instruction to Macklin ’ere.’ So this man, Macklin, that I was tellin’ you about, showed me my duties.... ’Ammick! I’ve got it! ’Ammick was our Major, an’ Mosse was Captain!” Humberstall celebrated his recapture of the name by labouring at the organ-panel on his knee. “Look out! You’ll smash it,” Anthony protested.