hers in barns.

A very peaceful trek, quite different from the dazzling swoop that was
threatened.

_July 20._

Am I telling you about the things you want to hear? Usually I think I've
talked mostly about our surroundings, doings, and only to a very small
extent about our thoughts. But, truth to relate, we think so little
that there is not much in that line to record. On this job you just
can't think. And a good thing too, perhaps.

[Sidenote: FLESSELLES]

However, here we are, and here I expect we shall remain for, say, a
week. The horses are all right out in the open. The men are in barns.
But we are in cottages--real, almost English-looking cottages. Edward
and I share a room in one, and the others are dotted about the village.
Now, this is the cottage:

From the high street (the only street) you turn into a little gate, and
then walk down a path of brick with a narrow flower border on either
side, and vegetables beyond. The cottage is white, with lace curtains
and brick floors, without carpets, like all French cottages. The walls
have endless pictures of saints and things, with occasional crucifixes
and school certificates and faded photographs of people in stiff dresses
and crimped hair.

Out at the back more kitchen-garden with some fruit-trees.

Altogether quite a charming little place. Dusty and rather flat open
country intersected by deepish valleys, not unlike the Cirencester road
if you removed all the woods, or nearly all. We don't, of course, know
what we are going to do now.

_July 23._

Things is curiouser and curiouser. In all haste we got ready to move. We
then moved like tortoises. I rode over to ---- yesterday. Cavalry all
over the place like locusts. And, lawks! what a din! Guns in a violent
paroxysm of rage. Aeroplanes wandering about in the sky, purring like
angry panthers, all yellow in the sunlight. And all day and night more
dusty men and dusty horses and dusty lorries and dusty guns coming and
going, coming and going.

The other squadron at last quite close to us. Long talks with Dennis.
He's had an exciting time, and was under orders for a most hair-raising
job, which didn't come off owing to Fritz's tiresome habit of doing the
unexpected. Horrors! The General has been trying Swallow. I fear he may
steal him. Of course he has every right to any horse in the regiment,
but it is quite difficult to smile. Swallow is, unfortunately, even more
showy than Rinaldo was; but he shied