I had a glimpse of him in the candlelight before stooping to feel my way down three or four narrow steps to the cellar, where the farmer ordinarily kept potatoes and vegetables. There were straw beds around the walls here, too. The major commanding the battalion rose from his seat at a table on which were some cutlery, a jam pot, tobacco, pipes, a newspaper or two, and army telegraph forms and maps. If the hosts of mansions could only make their hospitality as simple as the major’s, there would be less affectation in the world. He introduced me to an officer sitting on the other side of the table and to one lying in his blankets against the wall, who lifted his head and blinked and said that he was very glad to see me. It is a small world, for China cropped up here, as it had at brigade headquarters. The major had been in garrison at Peking when the war began. If my shipmate on a long battleship cruise, Lt.-Col. Dion Williams, U.S.M.C., reads this out in Peking, let it tell him that the major is just as urbane in the cellar of a second-rate farmhouse on the outskirts of Neuve Chapelle as he would be in a corner of the Peking Club. “How is it? Paining you any?” asked the major of Captain P----, on the other side of the table. “No account. It’s quite all right,” said the captain. “Using the sling?” “Part of the time. Hardly need it, though.” Captain P---- was one of those men whose eyes are always smiling; who seems, wherever he is, to be glad that he is not in a worse place; who goes right on smiling at the mud in the trenches and bullets and shells and death. They are not emotional, the British, perhaps, but they are given to cheeriness, if not to laughter, and they have a way of smiling at times when smiles are much needed. The smile is more often found at the front than back at Headquarters; or perhaps it is more noticeable there. “You see, he got a bullet through the arm yesterday,” the major explained. “He was reported wounded, but remained on duty in the trench.” I saw that the captain would rather not have publicity given to such an ordinary incident. He did not see why people should talk about his arm. “You are to go with him into the trench for the night,” the major added; and I thought myself very lucky in my companion. “Aren’t you going to have dinner with us?” the major asked him. “Why, I had something to eat not very long ago,” said Captain P----. One was not sure whether he had or not. “There’s plenty,” said the major. “In that event, I don’t see why I shouldn’t eat when I have a chance,” the captain returned; which I found was a characteristic trench habit, particularly in winter when exposure to the raw, cold air calls for plenty of body-furnace heat.