gripped tightly in his
hands.

Two or three days later news came up that the captain, still
unconscious, had been sent to London straightway from the base hospital,
and then for several weeks they heard no more of him, and a fresh notch
cut on the stock of the Mark III. gave Private Harry Hawke very little
satisfaction.

"If I hadn't told him that all was clear he'd never have shoved his 'ead
over the blinkin' sandbags," he kept muttering to himself. "Home ain't
like home without a mother, and I reckon 'e was father and mother to us
all art 'ere. Wish I was dead--I'm fed up!"

* * * * *

"By Jove, mater, this is good news indeed. Fancy Dennis being gazetted
to our battalion after all!" and Captain Bob's face lit up as he looked
across the breakfast table with the telegram that had just arrived in
his hand. "Only got a week's kit leave too, which means that he's to
join at once. I'll put him through his facings and show him just what to
get and what not to get, and if the Medical Board will only pass me fit
for service again we can go over together. He will be here this morning
too!"

A chorus of delight went up from the four youngsters on one side of the
table, and Master Billy Dashwood, aged eight, clapped his hands and
overturned the milk jug.

"Billy, Billy!" said his mother reprovingly. "When will you learn to
behave yourself and to take care?"

"When will you let me join the Boy Scouts?" retorted her youngest born,
gazing up at the ceiling with the face of an innocent cherub, and Mrs.
Dashwood was obliged to smile as she looked at her eldest son.

"Your father will be very pleased, Bob," she said. "There have been
Dashwoods in the regiment for generations, and it is nice to feel that
both my boys will be in a battalion in their father's brigade."

"You should be very proud, madame, that yours is such a military
family," said a young man who sat opposite to the children with his back
to the tall windows. "Let me see, you will now have four members serving
at this great crisis?"

"Yes, it is an honour of which I am indeed more than proud, Monsieur Van
Drissel," said his hostess.

"But Uncle Eric doesn't count--he's only at the War Office, and they do
nothing there," interposed the irrepressible Billy.

"I shall send you out of the room if you're rude," said his mother. "The
War Office is a most important branch."

It was a pleasant room in a charming house, whose ground