"So that," the sergeant-major said cheerfully, "the captain could very well spare half an hour to get his dinner. Or for anything else. . . ." Apart from the domestic desire that Tietjens' digestion should not suffer from irregular meals he had the professional conviction that for his captain to be in intimate private converse with a member of the gawdy Staff was good for the unit. ... "I suppose, sir," he added valedictorily to Tietjens, "I'd better arrange to put this draft, and the nine hundred men that came in this afternoon to replace them, twenty in a tent. . . . It's lucky we didn't strike them. . . ." Tietjens and the colonel began to push men out of their way, going towards the door. The Inniskilling-Canadian, a small open brown book, extended deprecatingly stood, modestly obtrusive, just beside the doorpost. Catching avidly at Tietjens' "Eh?" he said: "You'd got the names of the girls wrong in your copy, sir. It was Gwen Lewis I had a child by in Aberystwyth that I wanted to have the lease of the cottage and the ten bob a week. Mrs. Hosier that I lived with in Berwick St. James, she was only to have five guineas for a soovneer. . . . I've took the liberty of changing the names back again. . . ." Tietjens grabbed the book from him, and bending down at the sergeant-major's table scrawled his signature on the bluish page. He thrust the book back at the man and said: "There . . . fall out." The man's face shone. He exclaimed: "Thank you, sir. Thank you kindly, captain. . . . I wanted to get off and go to confession. I did bad. . . ." The McGill graduate with his arrogant black moustache put himself in the way as Tietjens struggled into his British warm. "You won't forget, sir, . . ." he began. Tietjens said: "Damn you, I've told you I won't forget. I never forget. You instructed the ignorant Jap in Asaki, but the educational authority is in Tokio. And your flagitious mineral-water company had their headquarters at the Tan Sen spring near Kobe. . . . Is that right? Well, I'll do my best for you." They walked in silence through the groups of men that hung round the orderly room door and gleamed in the moonlight. In the broad country street of the main line of the camp Colonel Levin began to mutter between his teeth: "You take enough trouble with your beastly crowd . . . a whole lot of trouble. . . . Yet . . ." "Well, what's the matter with us?" Tietjens said. "We get our drafts ready in thirty-six hours less than any other unit in this command." "I know you do," the other conceded. "It's only all these mysterious rows. Now . . ." Tietjens said quickly: "Do you mind my asking: Are we still on parade? Is this a strafe from General Campion as to the way I command my unit?" The other conceded quite as quickly and much more worriedly: "God forbid." He added more quickly still: "Old bean!" and prepared to tuck his wrist under Tietjens' elbow. Tietjens, however, continued to face the fellow. He was really in a temper.