And then he thought about it for a month. At the end of that time he made up his mind to join. He rode up Neap’s Lane one morning and rang his bell. When Ettie appeared the usual conversation underwent a slight variant: “Hulloa!” “Hulloa!” “All right?” “Ay.” “Doin’ much?” “Oo—mendin’ pa’s night-gown.” “Oh! I be goin’ to jine up.” “Oo—oh! Be ’ee?” “Ay.” “When be goin’?” “Monday with Dick Thursby and Len Cotton. An’ I think young Walters, and Bibbie Short mebbe.” “Oh, I say!” “Ay. Comin’ along to-night?” “Ay, if it doan’t rain.” “Well, see you then.” “So long, Ned.” On the following Monday Ned said good-by to his mother, and sweetheart, and to Toffee, and he and the other four boys walked over to the recruiting office at Carchester. They were drafted into the same unit, and sent up to Yorkshire to train. (Yorkshire being one hundred and fifty miles away was presumably the most convenient and suitable spot.) They spent five months there, and then Len Cotton was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, and the other four were placed in an infantry regiment and sent out to India. They did not get an opportunity of returning to Ashalton, but the night before he left Ned wrote to his mother: “Dear Mother, I think we are off to-morrow. They don’t tell us where we are going but they seem to think it’s India because of the Eastern kit served out and so on. Everything all right, the grub is fine. Young Walters has gone sick with a bile on his neck. Hope you are all right. See Toffee dont get into Mr. Mears yard for this is about the time he puts down that pison for the rats. Everything O. K. Love from Ned.” He wrote a very similar letter to Ettie, only leaving out the instructions about Toffee and adding “dont get overdoing it now the warm weathers on.” They touched at Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and Aden. At all these places he merely sent the cryptic postcard. He did not write a letter again until he had been three weeks up in the hills in India. As a matter of fact it had been a terribly rough passage nearly all the way, especially in the Mediterranean, and nearly all the boys had been sea-sick most of the time. Ned had been specially bad and in the Red Sea had developed a slight fever. In India he had been sent to a rest-camp up in the hills. He wrote: “Dear mother, everything all right. The grub is fine. I went a bit sick coming out but nothing. Quite O. K. now. This is a funny place. The people would make you laugh to look at. We beat the 2nd Royal Scots by two goals to one. I wasn’t playing but Binnie played a fine game at half back. He stopped their center forward, an old league player, time and again. Hope you are keeping all right. Does Henry Thatcham take Toffee out regler. Everything serene. Love from Ned.” In this letter the words “2nd Royal Scots” were deleted by the censor.