ve years ago
and simply poisoned everything he touched. He was what we call a
carrier."

"What did you do with him?" said the A.D.M.S.

"He won't do any more cooking; I've sent him home. The fellow's a
perfect leper, and ought to be interned like an alien enemy."

"Well, I'd rather have your job than mine even if prevention is more
honourable than cure," said he whom we know as "Smells," and who has a
nose like a fox-terrier's. "I am the _avant-garde_ of the Staff, and you
fellows can thank me that you are so merry and bright. If I didn't make
my sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime and fatigue
parties, where would you all be?"

"We should all be home on sick-leave and very pleased to get it," said
the A.P.M. ungratefully.

"The _maire_ thinks I'm mad, of course," continued 'Smells,' "and I
can't make him understand that cesspools and open sewers in the street
are not conducive to health."

"I expect they think we're rather too fond of spreading broad our
phylacteries," said the Assistant Provost Marshal. "Now I'm a sort of
licensing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this commune, and
the _estaminet_ proprietors think I'm a Temperance fanatic," he said,
as he put forth his hand for the whisky bottle. "One of them told me the
other day he preferred a German occupation to a British one, because the
Huns let him sell as much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet I'm
sure the little finger of a French provost-marshal is thicker than my
loins any day."

"Yes," said the Camp Commandant, "it's our melancholy duty to be
impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I
stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again
at the Base or somewhere else _en route_; it would relieve me of any
compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the
envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows write abominably."

"I'm something of a handwriting expert myself," said the A.P.M.,
ignoring the aspersion. "They have changed the colour of the passes
again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh study of the A.G.'s
signature; I believe he changes his style of handwriting with the colour
of the pass. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s bank balance," he
murmured dreamily; "I believe I could now forge his signature very
artistically."

"I wish some one would start a school of handwriting at G.H.Q.," said
the A.D.M.S. "I believe I receive more chits