“Hullo,” was the greeting I received from Owen. “There’s no tea left.” “I don’t want any tea,” I answered. “Has the post come?” There were three letters for me. As I slept at a house a little distance away, I took the letters along with me. “I’m going over to my room to clean up,” I shouted to Owen, who was reading inside the Mess-room. “What time’s old Jim coming in?” “Seven o’clock!” “All right,” I answered. “I’ll be over by seven.” III. EVENING As I walked up the garden path a few minutes before seven, I had to pass the kitchen door, where the servants slept, lived, and cooked our meals. I had a vision of Private Watson, the cook, busy at the oven; he was in his shirt-sleeves, hair untidy, trousers very grimy, and altogether a very unmartial figure. There seemed to be a dispute in progress, to judge from the high pitch to which the voices had attained. On these occasions Lewis’ piping voice reached an incredible falsetto, while his face flushed redder than ever. Watson, Owen’s servant, had superseded Gray as officers’ mess cook; the latter had, unfortunately, drunk one or two glasses of beer last time in billets, and, to give his own version, he “somehow felt very sleepy, and went down and lay under a bank,” and could remember nothing more until about ten o’clock, when he humbly reported his return to me. Meanwhile Watson had cooked the dinner, which was, of course, very late; and as he did it very well, and as Gray’s explanation seemed somewhat vague, we decided to make Watson cook, let Gray try a little work in the company for a change, and get the sergeant-major to send Owen another man for servant. Watson had signalised the entry to his new appointment by a quarrel with Madame (the Warwicks had managed to “bag” this ideal billet of ours temporarily, and we were in a much less comfortable one the last two occasions out of trenches); eventually Madame had hurled the frying-pan at him, amid a torrent of unintelligible French; neither could understand a word the other was saying, of course. Gray had been wont, I believe, to “lie low and say nuffin,” like Brer Fox, when Madame, who was old and half-crazed, came up and threw water on the fire in a fit of unknown anger. But Watson’s blood boiled at such insults from a Frenchwoman, and hence had followed a sharp contention ending in the projection of the frying-pan. Luckily, we were unmolested here: Watson could manage the dinner, anyway.