“I’m awfully sorry, Maitland,” he said. “I ought to have seen to those books. I did look after the Prayer Books. They’re here all right; at least most of them are.” “Prayer Books!” said Maitland. “If they were even whole Prayer Books! But those little yellow tracts of yours! They haven’t even got the Thirty-Nine Articles in them. If they were pukka Prayer Books I’d borrow one and try to read it. I expect there are lots of interesting things in the small print parts of the Prayer Book, the parts you padres never read out. But what’s the good of the books you have? Nothing in them but what we all know off by heart.” Haddingly sighed. He was painfully conscious of the shortcomings of the Field Service Books supplied for the use of the troops. Dalton came to his defence. “Don’t strafe the padre,” he said. “He brought along a church, an entire church. Is there another padre in the whole Army who could have got a church to a place like this?” Dalton’s almost incredible statement was literally true. Haddingly had succeeded, contrary to all regulations, in bringing with him from England a corrugated iron church. It was quite a small one, it folded up and could be packed flat. When unpacked and erected it was undeniably a church. It had a large cross at one end of it outside. Inside it was furnished with an altar, complete with cross and candlesticks, a collapsible harmonium and a number of benches. Chaplains have certainly no right to load up troopships with churches, but Haddingly had somehow got his to Egypt. By what blandishments the transport officer had been induced to drag the thing out into the desert beyond the canal no one knew. Haddingly was one of those uncomplainingly meek men who never stand up for themselves. It is a curious fact, but it is a fact, that a really helpless person gets things done for him which the most aggressive and masterful men cannot accomplish. The success in life of women of the “clinging” kind is an illustration of this law. Haddingly smiled with joy at the mention of his church. It stood, securely bolted together, a little outside the camp. No one, the cross being disproportionately large, could possibly mistake it for anything but a church. In front of it was a notice board, a nice black notice board with a suggestion of Gothic architecture about it. On the board, in bright white letters, was a list of services and the name of the church--St John in the Wilderness. Originally, before the move into the desert, it had been simply St John the Evangelist, but Haddingly felt that the new circumstances demanded a change of dedication. Everyone, from the colonel down to the humblest private, was secretly proud of the church. The possession of such a thing gave a certain distinction to the battalion. Haddingly was a good deal chaffed about it; but the building was in a fair way to become a regimental mascot. “I’m not strafing the padre,” said Captain Maitland, “but I wish we had a few of the books we left behind.”