While we were talking a bugle blew. "There's the cook-house bugle," said Art. "Come along and have some dinner with us." He took some tin dishes from the shelves above the beds, gave me one, and we joined in the rush down the stairs and across the square to the cook house. In the army, the cook house corresponds to the dining-room of civilization. B Company cook house was a long, narrow, wooden building. On each side of a middle aisle that led to the kitchen were plain wooden tables, each accommodating sixteen men, eight on each side. When we arrived, the building was full. When you are eating as the guest of the Government, there is no hostess to reserve for you the choice portions; therefore it behooves you to come early. In the army, if you are not there at the beginning of a meal, you go hungry. Thus are inculcated habits of punctuality. But if you are called and the meal is not ready, you have your revenge. Two hundred and sixty-two men of B Company were showing their disapproval of the cooks' lack of punctuality. Screeches, yells, and cat cries rivaled the din of stamping feet and the banging of tin dishes. Occasionally the door of the kitchen swung open and afforded a glimpse of three sweating cooks and their group of helpers, working frenziedly. Sometimes the noise stopped long enough to allow some spokesman to express his opinion of the cooks, and their fitness for their jobs, with that delightful simplicity and charming candor that made the language of the First Newfoundland Regiment so refreshing. Loud applause served the double purpose of encouraging the speakers and drowning the reply of the incensed cooks. This was a pity, because the language of an army cook is worth hearing, and very enlightening. Men who formerly prided themselves on their profanity have listened, envious and subdued, awed by the originality and scope of a cook's vocabulary, and thenceforth quit, realizing their own amateurishness. Occasionally, though, one of the cooks, stung to retort, would appear, wiping his hands on his overalls, and in a few well-chosen phrases, cover some of the more recent exploits of the one who had angered him, or endeavor to clear his own character, always in language brilliant, fluent, and descriptive. But the longest wait must come to an end, and at last the door of the kitchen swung open and the helpers appeared. Some mysterious mess fund had been tapped, and that day dinner was particularly good. First came soup, then a liberal helping of roast beef, with potatoes, tomatoes, and peas, followed by plum pudding. B Company soon finished. In the army, dinner is a thing not of ceremony, but of necessity. I did not wait for my sandy-haired friend; his name, I gathered, was Art Pratt. He and a neighbor were adjusting a difference regarding the ownership of a combination knife, fork, and spoon. I found my way back to the room marked "Thirty-two men." Just as I entered, I heard the bugle sound the "half-hour dress."