ter jumped up excitedly. "This is better," he said. "It's a letter from
Langton at Rouen, a chap I met there who writes occasionally. He's been
hauled in for this stunt himself, and is to go to Abbeville as well. By
Jove, I'll go up with him if I can. Give me some paper, somebody. I'll
have to write to him at once, or we'll boss it."

"And make a will, and write to a dozen girls, I should think," said
Pennell. "I don't know what the blooming Army's coming to. Might as well
chuck it and have peace, I think. But meantime I've got to leave you
blighted slackers to gad about the place, and go and do an honest day's
work. _I_ don't get Staff jobs and red tabs. No; I help win the ruddy
war, that's all. See you before you go, Graham, I suppose? They'll likely
run the show for a day or two more without you. There'll be time for you
to stand a dinner on the strength of it yet."

A week later Peter met Langton by appointment in the Rouen club, the two
of them being booked to travel that evening via Amiens to Abbeville. His
tall friend was drinking a whisky-and-soda in the smoke-room and talking
with a somewhat bored expression to no less a person than Jenks of the
A.S.C.

Peter greeted them. "Hullo!" he said to the latter. "Fancy meeting you
here again. Don't say you're going to lecture as well?"

"The good God preserve us!" exclaimed Jenks blasphemously. "But I am off
in your train to Boulogne. Been transferred to our show there, and
between ourselves, I'm not sorry to go. It's a decent hole in some ways,
Boulogne, and it's time I got out of Rouen. You're a lucky man, padre,
not to be led into temptation by every damned girl you meet. I don't know
what they see in me," he continued mournfully, "and, at this hour of the
afternoon, I don't know what I see in them."

"Nor do I," said Langton. "Have a drink, Graham? There'll be no getting
anything on the ruddy train. We leave at six-thirty, and get in somewhere
about four a.m. next morning, so far as I can make out."

"You don't sound over-cheerful," said Graham.

"I'm not. I'm fed up over this damned lecture stunt! The thing's
condemned to failure from the start, and at any rate it's no time for it.
Fritz means more by this push than the idiots about here allow. He may
not get through; but, on the other hand, he may. If he does, it's UP with
us all. And here we are to go lecturing on economics and industrial
problems while the damned house is on fire!"

Peter took his drink