We decided that it will come off next time even if I get only forty-eight hours’ leave. I had put aside fifteen hundred francs, which I gave to her, and she will arrange everything, furniture and outfit, to set us up in a little house two or three hundred yards from her parents. Well, old man, though it was hard to say good-bye at the station, we shall be married before the year is up, I hope. Fourgues told me that I could count on eight days, but the unloading was done very quickly at Boucau because the weather cleared up, and I received a telegram the fifth day, ordering me to rejoin at Saint-Nazaire double quick. The _Pamir_ was to call there two days after and would probably sail for America. I was rather astonished at the destination because the _Pamir_ has the habit now of tubbing it around Europe; but sailors must be ready for anything. Marguerite stuffed my bag full of preserves and made a big parcel of collars and handkerchiefs, socks and shirts. She has embroidered lovely initials on all of them and added some little silk pocket handkerchiefs, some coloured braces, and some absolutely ripping neckties. Dandy Dick, that’s me, old man! Villiers, who puts in all his spare time at the haberdashers’ collecting multicoloured hosiery, is dying of envy. I couldn’t find anybody at Saint-Nazaire; only a letter at the company’s agency, in which Fourgues told me to report at Boulogne, the _Pamir_ having been sent there, and that he would expect me the following Sunday. You can imagine what a mug I felt to have run away from La Rochelle without having had time to draw breath--and all the more so as it only gave me forty-eight more hours, not long enough for me to go home. So I stopped a day in Paris. A bobby hauled me up at the Nantes station and another in the Paris Tube, to inquire about my military status. I was in mufti. If I had only known, I should have made the entire trip in the Company’s uniform, for everyone in France looks at you askance and says disagreeable things if you’re not in uniform.