no chance against our William and
his political education. "That fellow," I heard one disgruntled
competitor remark of him, "would hug the Devil for a knob of coke."
Once only did he meet his match, and a battle of Titans resulted.

In pursuit of his business he entered a certain farm-house, to
find the baby already in possession of another officer, a heavy
red creature with a monocle, who was rocking the infant's cradle
seventy-five revolutions per minute and making dulcet noises on a
moustache comb.

William's heart fell to his field boots; he recognised the red
creature's markings immediately. This was another politician; no
bloodless victory would be his; fur would fly first, powder burn--Wow!

The red person must have tumbled to William as well, for he increased
the revolutions to one hundred and forty per minute and broke into a
shrill lullaby of his own impromptu composition:--

"Go to sleep, Mummy's liddle Did-ums;
Go to sleep, Daddy's liddle Thing-ma-jig."

Nevertheless this did not baffle our William. He approached from a
flank, deftly twitched the infant out of its cradle by the scruff of
its neck, and commenced to plaster it with tender kisses. However the
red man tailed it as it went past and hung on, kissing any bits he
could reach. When the mother reappeared they were worrying the baby
between them as a couple of hound puppies worry the hind leg of a cub.
She beat them faithfully with a broom and hove both of them out into
the wide wet world, and we all slept in a bog that night, and William
was much abused and loathed. But that was his only failure.

If getting billets is William's job, getting rid of them is the Babe's
affair. William, like myself, has far too great a mastery of the
_patois_ to handle delicate situations with success. For instance,
when the fanner approaches me with tidings that my troopers have burnt
two ploughshares and a crowbar and my troop horses have masticated a
brick wall I engage him in palaver, with the result that we eventually
part, I under the impression that the incident is closed, and he under
the impression that I have promised to buy him a new farm. This leads
to all sorts of international complications.

The Babe, on the other hand, regards a knowledge of French as immoral
and only knows enough of it to order himself a drink. He is also
gifted with a slight stutter, which under the stress of a foreign
language becomes chronic. So when we evacuate a billet W