We are building. This proves to be a painful process, consisting largely of discovering what you can’t have and what you will have to do without. For instance, it appears that there is not enough lumber to be had in France to furnish me a complete floor, and I had set my heart on having a nice, whole, _sweepable_ floor! French barracks, one should note in passing, are constructed of sections; the upper part of the walls containing the window sections being vertical, the lower sloping outward at an angle of about thirty-five degrees. By a process of begging, borrowing and salvaging—nobody says _steal_ any more these days,—I have visions of getting the floor in the centre all filled in, but for the edges, under the sloping sides, I am afraid there is no hope. But I’m not going to mind, I tell the boys; I shall start a series of war gardens in the little mud-plots, cabbages in number one, brussels sprouts in number two, and violets just for my own satisfaction in three. And the boys can take turns hoeing them. For the rest, we have cut a door in the side for general entrance, the original one being reserved for cooks, colonels and K. P.s, and across the front end opposite the stage we have constructed our store-room, kitchen and canteen. A lattice is all that separates the kitchen from the counter; this is so, in order to facilitate social intercourse between the cook and the customers, and also to enable the secretary, no matter if she is engaged in stirring the chocolate or washing the dishes, to keep a weather eye on what is going on outside. But the triumph of my hut-plan is the window-seat. Half-way down the hut we have a stove, a stove which looks as big as an engine-boiler, a stove which makes the eyes of all beholders fairly pop with admiration. “That’s a real stove,” say the boys. “That ain’t no frog stove I’ll tell the world!” And back of the stove we have a seat three sections long against the wall. Wonderful to say that seat is comfortable and what’s more it has sofa-cushions. “What are those pillers for?” demanded one boy suspiciously. “Are they for the officers to sit on?” “D’you know what this is?” asked a boy today as he luxuriously stretched his length on the window-seat. “This is the Lounge Lizard’s Roost.” So the Lounge Lizard’s Roost it is. The yellow curtains are already up in place. They give a rather stunning effect against the black tar paper when the æroplane camouflage curtains are let down. In each space between the windows we have tacked one of that gorgeous series of French railway posters, so my hut is brave with color, tawny orange, sharp blues, and shadowy purples.