“We won’t charge you for board and lodging, old man, if that’s what you mean. Take it and welcome. With regard to Rewsby and the nurse, you can do what you like. Meanwhile, you’ll be glad to know that the ready-made kit you ordered from Brady & Co. have turned up this afternoon.” “I’d better clean myself up and put some of it on,” said Baltazar. “You had indeed,” said Pillivant. “You look as if you had fallen into a sewer.” The previous day, obeying telephone instructions, a representative of a firm of ready-made clothiers in the cathedral city had called to take measurements and orders. This evening Baltazar was able to array himself once more in clothes of his own. By getting rid of borrowed garments he felt relieved of an immense burden. “Well, how did you get on?” asked Pillivant heartily as they sat down to dinner. “Find anything?” “Nothing but an appetite,” replied Baltazar with a smile. He could not tell this man of alien ideals and limited intellectual horizon of his irreparable loss, or hint his intolerable despair. The coarse husband and the common, over-bejewelled wife laughed at his sally, hoped the menu would furnish sufficiency of food. He was but to say the word, and they would kill the goose they were fattening up for Michaelmas. The jest lasted off and on through the meal. They pressed him to second and third helpings, joking, though genuinely hospitable. At first he strove to entertain them. Spoke picturesquely of his queer life in remotest China, where he lived the Chinese life and almost came to think Chinese thoughts. Mrs. Pillivant yawned behind bediamonded fingers. Pillivant said: “Dam funny,” with complete lack of enthusiasm in the expletive, and as soon as he found a point of departure, set forth on the story of a discreditable grievance against the War Office. He couldn’t personally examine every plank of timber supplied. It had all been passed by their own inspector. If they sent down a young idiot of a subaltern who didn’t know the difference between green pine and green cheese, it was their affair, not his. He had got his contract, and there it was. Their talk about an enquiry was all nonsense. The War Office ought to employ business men on business affairs. He had just gone in, with another firm, on a big contract for a aerodrome in the North of England. Some political Paul Pry had discovered—so he said—that it could be built for half the money. Rot. Patriotism was one thing, but running your business at a loss was another. The patriotic contractor must earn his living, like anybody else. Why should his wife and family starve? In righteous indignation he poured himself a bumper of 1904 Bollinger, which he drained before finishing the whole grouse which as a fifth course had been set before him. The entire system was one vast entanglement of red tape, he continued. We were out to beat Germany. How could we, when every effort was strangled by the red tape aforesaid? Germany had to be beaten.