n are missing, and I'm sending a
corporal to hunt them up. We're off in a few minutes. I met young T----
just now. I've been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident
that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star part of
cheering other fellows up. "He's feeling rather blue," he continued.
"Depressed at saying good-bye to his friends, you know."

"Oh, that's no good. Tell him I've got a plum-pudding and a bottle of
whisky among my kit. Yes, and a topping liqueur."

I looked at B----'s compartment. His servant, a sapper, was stowing the
kit in the racks and under the seat, with the help of a portable
acetylene lamp which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness, a
darkness which you could almost feel with your hand.

"I say, B----," I asked as I contemplated a hay-stack of things, "what's
the regulation allowance for an officer's luggage? I forget."

"One hundred pounds. Oh yes, you may laugh, old chap, but I got round
the R.T. officer. Christmas! you know. And I can stow it in my billet.
Cheers the other fellows up, you know."

B----'s kit weighed, at a moderate computation, about a quarter of a
ton, and included many things not to be found in the field-service
regulations. But it would never surprise me if I found a performing
elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy Bears in his baggage. He would
gravely explain that it cheered the fellows up, you know.

"Major," I said, "you are a 'carrier'!"

"Carter Paterson?" said the Major, with a glance at his luggage.

"No, I didn't mean that. You are not as quick in the uptake as usual,
especially considering your medical qualifications. What I meant was
that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get
typhoid and recover, but continue to propagate the germs long after they
become immune from them themselves. You're diffusing a gaiety which you
no longer feel."

It was a bold shot, and if we hadn't been pretty old friends it would
have been an impertinence. The Major put his arm in mine and took me
aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You've hit the
bull's-eye, old chap," he said, in a low voice. "But don't give me away.
Come into the carriage."

He was strangely silent as we sat facing each other in the compartment,
each of us conscious of a hundred things to say, and saying none of
them. The train might start at any moment, and such things as we did say
were trivial irrelevancies. Suddenly he pulled out a poc