The lunch was long, far more of the Flemish midday dinner than the French déjeuner. The A.P.M. took the lot, commented freely, enjoyed himself immensely. There were _hors d’œuvres_ (sardines, beans in oil, some sort of sausage, a kind of horse-radish, “Wonder where the devil she gets ’em?” said the A.P.M.), soup (ordinary, but enlivened by parsley and bits or toast fried in fat and something, third cousin to a piece of garlic, “scrumptious”), veal and spinach (very good, but “no fish, pity!”). In a moment, Mademoiselle Vanderlynden stood over them. “I am sorry, we have only sardines, they will not let the fish come by train!” Chicken and salad (“Excellent. Ah, they understand oil, the French”), little biscuits, coffee that dripped through a strainer into glasses, rum (“That’s English, I bet!”), and Dormer, shy in such matters, and without social code, began wondering whether he could offer to pay. He had learned during bitter years, one rule: “Always treat an A.P.M. if you can!” This had not been his preoccupation during the meal. He had been haunted by a tag of verse--from the “Ingoldsby Legends” which he certainly hadn’t read for twenty years. He was not one to read “poetry.” But neither had he a regular soldier’s trained indifference. He knew where it was going to end, this quest on which they were engaged. Some poor brute who had volunteered to come to this blessed country to fight the Germans, would be hauled out of some ghastly apology for a “rest” camp--if he were lucky--more likely out of some dug-out or cellar, or even from Hospital--placed under arrest--frightened dumb, if by any chance he had any speech in him, and finally tried by a court to whom he was a “Tommy” (the sort of person who enlisted in the regular army because he was out of work), and sentenced to some penalty. And here was the A.P.M. eating and drinking with gusto. It reminded Dormer of: Send for Trefooze, and Lieutenant Tregooze, Send for Sir Carnaby Jenks of the Blues. How much must I fork out, my trump, For the whole first floor of the Magpie and Stump? the rhyme of the drunken swells who couldn’t even keep awake to see a man hanged. It was, however, the ideal state of mind for making war. The A.P.M. was saying to Mademoiselle Vanderlynden: “The bill please, Madam,” and when he got it, “By Gad, did we drink all that? Well, I don’t grudge it.”