o give me
an idea how it ought to be done. I say nothing of the result; but for
reasons connected with Toby I hope he won't come again. For in the middle
of a narrow street crowded with lorries, he jumped off his horse, flung
(I think that's the expression)--flung me the reins and said, "Just wait
here while I see the Mayor a moment."

The Major's horse I can describe quite shortly--a nasty big black horse.

Toby I have already described as a nice horse, but he had been knee-deep
in mud, inspecting huts, for nearly half an hour, and was sick of
billeting.

I need not describe two-hundred-lorries-on-a-dark-evening to you.

And so, seeing that you know the constituents, I must let you imagine how
they all mixed....

* * * * *

This is a beastly war. But it has its times; and when our own particular
bit of the battle is over, and what is left of the battalion is marching
back to rest, I doubt if, even in England (which seems very far off), you
will find two people more contented with the morning than Toby and I, as
we jog along together.

COMMON

Seated in your comfortable club, my very dear sir, or in your delightful
drawing-room, madam, you may smile pityingly at the idea of a mascot
saving anybody's life. "What will be, will be," you say to yourself (or
in Italian to your friends), "and to suppose that a charm round the neck
of a soldier will divert a German shell is ridiculous." But out there,
through the crumps, things look otherwise.

Common had sat on the mantelpiece at home. An ugly little ginger dog,
with a bit of red tape for his tongue and two black beads for his eyes,
he viewed his limited world with an air of innocent impertinence very
attractive to visitors. Common he looked and Common he was called,
with a Christian name of Howard for registration. For six months he sat
there, and no doubt he thought that he had seen all that there was to see
of the world when the summons came which was to give him so different an
outlook on life.

For that summons meant the breaking up of his home. Master was going
wandering from trench to trench, Mistress from one person's house to
another person's house. She no doubt would take Common with her; or
perhaps she couldn't be bothered with an ugly little ginger dog, and he
would be stored in some repository, boarded out in some Olympic kennel.
"Or do you _possibly_ think Master might--"

He looked very wistful that last mornin