he two stamps, and then
at the boy. She was a woman of experience and discernment She saw the
muddy, tattered clothes. She read the look of desire in the eyes. She
understood.

"What do you want?" she said.

"Stewed fruit, lady, and--and custard."

She turned from the boy to Mrs. Jocelyn.

"It's clean against all rules," she said. "I know I oughtn't to, but I
must---I simply must give this boy something."

Mrs. Jocelyn looked up from her writing. She saw all that the other had
seen. She had talked with many men. One glance was enough for her. She
knew what the boy had been through. With swift intuition she guessed at
what he felt and how he yearned. She saw the name of his regiment on his
one remaining shoulder strap. It was her dead boy's regiment, and every
man in it was dear to her. Already the other lady was at work, putting a
spoonful of stewed figs on a soup plate. Mrs. Jocelyn seized her by the
arm and dragged her roughly back from the counter.

"Don't dare to do it," she said, "it's my right No one else has so good
a right to do it as I have."

So Private Wakeman sat down to a plate piled with stewed figs, swamped
with a yellowish liquid called custard in canteens in France. Beside him
were jam tarts and great slabs of cake. From a mouth never empty, though
he swallowed fast, came in short gushes the story of the strafing of the
Prussian Guard, told at last to ears which drank in greedily every word
of it.

So Mrs. Jocelyn claimed and took at last her dearest right.

VI ~~ JOURNEY'S END

I had a long journey before me, and I looked forward to it with dread.
It is my habit when forced to travel in France, the part of France
chiefly affected by the war, to resign myself to a period of misery. I
relapse into a condition of sulky torpor. Railway Transport Offices may
amuse themselves by putting me into wrong trains. Officers in command of
trains may detach the carriage in which I am and leave it for hours in
a siding. My luggage may be--and generally is--hopelessly lost. I may
arrive at my destination faint for want of food. But I bear all
these things without protest or complaint. This is not because I am
particularly virtuous or self-trained to turn the other cheek to the
smiter. I am morally feeble, deficient in power of self-defence, a lover
of peace with discomfort, rather than honourable strife.

I felt no small joy when I discovered that Thompson was to be my
travelling companion on this