After soup, sausages and beef, and rice-pudding and tinned fruit, came Watson’s special dish--cheese _au gratin_ on toast. This was a glutinous concoction, and a little went a long way. Then followed _café au lait_ made in the teapot, which was the signal for cigarettes to be lit up, and chairs to be moved a little to allow of a comfortable expansion of legs. Owen proposed sitting out in the summer-house, but on going outside reported that it was a little too chilly. So we remained where we were. Edwards was talking of Amiens: he had been there for the day yesterday, and incidentally discovered that there was a cathedral there. “I know it,” said I. “I used to go there every Saturday when I was at the Army School.” “You had a good time at the Army School, didn’t you?” asked Jim. “Tip-top time,” said I. “It’s a really good show. The Commandant was the most wonderful man we ever met. By the way, that concert Tuesday night was a really good show.” Jim Potter and Edwards had got it up; it had been an _al fresco_ affair, and the night had been ideally warm for it. Edwards had trained a Welsh choir with some success. Several outsiders had contributed, the star of the evening being Basil Hallam, the well-known music-hall artist, whose dainty manner, reminding one of the art of Vesta Tilley, and impeccable evening clothes had produced an unforgettably bizarre effect in the middle of such an audience and within sound of the guns. He was well known to most of the men as “the bloke that sits up in the sausage.” For any fine day, coming out of trenches or going in, you could see high suspended the “sausage,” whose home and “base” was between Treux and Mericourt, and whose occupant and eye was Basil Hallam. And so the “sausage bloke” was received enthusiastically at our concert. As we talked about the concert, Owen began singing “Now Florrie was a Flapper,” which had been Basil Hallam’s most popular song, and as he sang he rose from his chair and walked about the room; he was evidently enjoying himself, though his imitation of Basil Hallam was very bad indeed. As he sang, we went on talking. “A good entry in _Comic Cuts_ to-night,” I remarked. “‘A dog was heard barking in Fricourt at 11 p.m.’ Someone must have been hard up for intelligence to put that in.” “A dog barking in Fricourt,” said old Jim, warming up. “‘A dog barking in Fricourt.’ What’s that--Corps stuff? I never read the thing; good Lord, no! That’s what it is to have a Staff--‘A dog barking in Fricourt!’” “The Corps officer didn’t hear it,” said I. “It was some battalion intelligence officer that was such a fool as to report it.”