"Why not?" "Some of it might get broken--not quite accidentally." "But surely," gasped Doggie, "the soldiers would not be allowed to come in here and touch my furniture?" "It seems," said the subaltern, after a bewildered stare, "that you have quite a lot to learn." Doggie had. The subaltern reported a new kind of animal to the mess. The mess saw to it that Doggie should be crammed with information--but information wholly incorrect and misleading, which added to his many difficulties. When his ton of kit arrived he held an unwilling reception in the hut and found himself obliged to explain to gravely curious men the use for which the various articles were designed. "This, I suppose, is a new type of gas-mask?" No. It was a patent cooker. Doggie politely showed how it worked. He also demonstrated that a sleeping-bag was not a kit-sack of a size unauthorized by the regulations, and that a huge steel-pointed walking-stick had nothing to do with agriculture. He was very weary of his visitors by the time they had gone. The next day the Adjutant advised him to scrap the lot. So sorrowfully he sent back most of his purchases to London. Then the Imp of Mischance brought as a visitor to the mess, a subaltern from another regiment who belonged to Doggie's part of the country. "Why--I'm blowed if it isn't Doggie Trevor!" he exclaimed carelessly. "How d'ye do, Doggie?" So thenceforward he was known in the regiment by the hated name. There were rags in which, as he was often the victim, he was forced to join. His fastidiousness loathed the coarse personal contact of arms and legs and bodies. His undeveloped strength could not cope with the muscle of his young brother barbarians. Aching with the day's fatigue, he would plead, to no avail, to be left alone. Compared with these feared and detested scraps, he considered, in after-times, battles to be agreeable recreations.