It was towards teatime when he satisfied me of his own innocence on these points; but don't run away with the idea that by this time we were well on with the business. We had barely as much as started. How are you to fix the "date of journey" in such a manner as to give the traveller a clear night for accommodation in one country, or a clear day for subsistence in another, when he leaves his home at 5.15 P.M., arrives at the end of the first stage at 6.10 P.M., sleeps in a hotel till 11 P.M., gets in the train at thirty-five minutes past, crosses the frontier at 2 P.M. on the following day, arrives at his Italian destination at 5 A.M. on the morning after that, and then, if you please, goes to bed in another hotel? Old soldier though I am, there didn't seem to me to be a single line in a single column which I could satisfactorily fill in. True, there was the space for "Remarks," but our Mr. Booth was quite sure that my remarks were not what the Pay People called for. By this time I was for giving in, but George was now the persistent one. It was never his pocket he cared for; it was just one of his confounded principles not to be beaten by anything, not even an Army Form. I expressed some surprise that in the course of this tour of duty he had not managed to find his way to America for an hour or two, if only to complicate my business with the dollar question... I read the whole Form again, from start to finish, including the bit about vouchers being required for any unusual expenditure, such as cab-fares of over ten shillings. I then told George to write down on a piece of paper how much money he had when he started on his silly journey, and how much he had in hand when he got back; to deduct the latter from the former and tell me the result; to go away, leave me to wrestle all night with the problem, come back next morning at nine, remain motionless and strictly in one country in the meanwhile, neither accommodated nor subsisting. He gave me the figure, 173 francs, and never mentioned the subject to me again for days owing to the sullen fury he noted in my expression every time he cleared his throat to do so. After ten days I handed George a chit from the Pay People for "one hundred and seventy francs for travelling expenses, 30/10/1917 to 20/11/1917, for tour of duty to Italy." George said I had a dashed fine brain to have worked out the claim; I told him the Pay Man had a dashed kind heart to settle it. I hadn't been able to avoid mentioning Italy; but for the rest the Pay Man simply must have thought that George had driven all the way to the frontier and back in cabs and done precious little duty on the other side of it. Wouldn't you have thought so, Charles, if you had received a claim merely for eighty-five cabs, at two francs a time, and all in France, too? Yours ever, HENRY. * * * * * [Illustration: _Profiteer_. "VELL, 'ERE'TH ANOTHER PENNY FOR LOOKIN' THO MITHERABLE!"]