The business of the gunners was to hide their "hows" from prying German eyes by land and air and on telephone summons to pump destruction at some unseen point on the map, according to tabular calculations. At other times they might walk about in the mud or sit in the mud inside their dug-outs. It was enough to make a bold knight of olden story, who carried a Toledo or a Damascus blade, fall in a fit, as Phil remarked. Should the Germans locate them, a tornado of "krumps" descended on their position and they sat in the dug-outs considering whether or not everybody there would be "done in," as the English say, by a direct hit. Then they moved to another place through the mud and built more dug-outs in the mud and began the daily grind over again, the vacancies caused by casualties being filled by recruits. But they had intervals in billets, where they crowded together in peasants' houses out of the zone of shell-fire, and smoked and read and waited for the mail, and expatiated on how it would seem to have a real bath in a real tub in a land where there was no mud. Spring did come, though there were soldiers in the British army who thought that it never would. They could not comprehend how anything so pleasant could ever happen in war time in Flanders. It found Phil with a bit of white and blue ribbon on his blouse, which had been given for what other people, including a division commander, said was a gallant deed showing exceptional initiative. He was willing to accept their view as official, though he could not honestly agree with it. However, it was the source of enormous happiness in Longfield and Truckleford. Once he had been back at Truckleford on leave for a week; and, after the mud, he did not mind if the vicar and Mrs. Sanford made as much fuss over him as if he were a real hero. Madame Ribot had returned to Paris. He had seen neither Henriette nor Helen, though Henriette wrote to him regularly. She was at one of the hospital bases not more than three hours' motor ride away; but if he had had ten motors he could not have gone to see her. Each tiny cog of the machine must keep in its place. None may go moving about at will. He came to watch for Henriette's handwriting and the postmarks of Longfield as the two links with the world; and Truckleford had also become a part of his existence. Henriette seemed the adjutant of Lady Truckleford, devoted to her work. Her letters ever revived the thousand pictures of her from Truckleford to Mervaux and back again and the spirit of them was expressed in the words: "The woman waits while the man goes out to fight." Her references to Helen, who seemed to be at the same base but with another unit, were the only news he had of the other cousin except her drawings, which continued to appear in the weeklies. Helen, Henriette said, was still trying to get used to the sight of blood.