Here’s a glorious June morning with a touch of chill in the air and a jolly gold sun shooting arrows into the wheatfields. The chief sound I hear is the rattling of head-chains, for the drivers are hard at work shining up their harness. These summer days go by very pleasantly, but they throw one’s thoughts back a little wistfully to the Junes of other years—especially those in which the train came skidding down the mountains from Spokane to the ranch and the lake. All day, from first waking in the morning, we begin to gamble on our chances with the mail. It arrives any time between two and five o’clock; the evening passes in reading and re-reading our letters and concocting replies. I think some letters from you are nearly due again and I’m hoping for one this afternoon. I think I mentioned that our battery has a French baby boy of three for its mascot, just at present. He has been christened Bully Beef, but for what reason I don’t know. Bully Beef falls in beside the Sergeant-Major on all parades. During stables he inspects the horses, toddling round the lines and hanging on to the finger of an officer. The other day he fell into the river while the horses were watering. No one noticed his disappearance for a minute or two; then he was discovered standing nearly chin-deep, doing a very quiet cry. He was consoled with pennies, and I undertook to lead him up to his mother. There are many stories about Bully Beef’s origin. Some say that his father is a rich Frenchman already married; others, a dead poilu; others, a sergeant of a Highland Division which was encamped in this neighbourhood. His mother is an exceedingly pretty French girl and she is not married. I can’t help feeling that Bully Beef must be half British, for he isn’t timid like a French child. On the contrary, he hides in the hedges and throws stones at us when he is offended, and has a finely exaggerated sense of his childish dignity. What memories he’ll have when he’s become a man. There was another character I mentioned in a previous letter—I called him “Battling Brown”—the chap has D.S.O. and Military Crosses with bars to them and delights in putting on raids. I’ve since found that he cuts a notch in his revolver for every Hun he has killed with it. His present weapon has eighteen notches and the wooden handle of the first is notched to pieces. It’s refreshing to find a man on our side of the line who knows how to hate. If we had hated more at the first, the war would be ended. Personally I can only hate ideas and nations—not persons; I acknowledge this as a weakness in myself.