The next morning the medical officer arrived at the crack of dawn. He found the chocolate cups from the night before unwashed. He was shocked. He too read the Secretary a lecture. Then he departed to do the sensible, the saving thing, which was to recommend to the Major that we be allowed a detail. So it all worked out for the best in the end. “Neddy” as we have christened the detail is now a part of the family. A shy, dreamy lad, he is at hand to help from early morning until closing time at nine at night, and I actually have to shoo him out to his meals. The only trouble with Neddy is that he is so good I am sure that he is going to die young. And besides Neddy I now have a pet bugaboo. This has proved so useful these last few days that I don’t know how I ever kept a canteen without one. Now any time that officers come to my kitchen door to tease for cigarettes out of selling hours I can gleefully tell them: “Oh, but I wouldn’t dare! The Major, you know! He’s expressly forbidden it! If I did and he learned about it, he would surely have me court-martialed!” Of course when the boys come out of hours that is quite a different matter. Then, too, as the Major is detested by the men, this furnishes a common bond of sympathy. This morning a boy came to my back door to borrow our axe in order to chop up the Major’s wood. “You can have it on one condition,” I told him. “What’s that?” “That you chop off the Major’s head with it too.” Gondrecourt, May 24. I have always cherished a secret longing to have pets in my canteen: I have heard of huts that kept kittens and canaries, and once I visited in one where an ant-eater, if not an _habitué_, was at least a frequent and honoured guest and sat in the ladies’ laps at the movie-shows. At various times I have considered and regretfully abandoned the project of rabbits, a puppy, goldfish and a goat. But till recently the nearest I have come to realizing my dreams was when I found two large snails with black and yellow shells by the roadside. I carried them into the canteen and set them on a flowering branch in a vase. For two days the boys took a casual interest. They nicknamed them Bill and Daisy. “The French eat snails you know,” I told them. “You don’t say!” “Yes and I had some myself the other day.” “Aw shucks! You didn’t _really_, did you? Why, before I’d eat them things! Say, what did they taste like anyway?” “They would have tasted pretty good,” I answered, “if only while you were eating them you could have stopped thinking what they were!” One boy staring at my pets asked innocently; “Will butterflies come but of those?”