motor-cycles and deliver the rest of my
quite unimportant despatches. It would not start. We worked for twenty
minutes in the rain vainly, then a motor-cyclist turned up from the
nearest brigade to see what had become of me,--the progress of the post
is checked over the wire. We arranged matters--but then neither his
motor-cycle nor the motor-cycle of the second artillery motor-cyclist
would start. It was laughable. Eventually we got the brigade despatch
rider started with my report.

A fifth motor-cyclist, who discreetly did not stop his engine, took my
despatches back to "the Div." The second artillery motor-cycle we
started after quarter of an hour's prodigious labour. The first and mine
were still obstinate, so he and I retired to the inn, drank brandy and
hot water, and conversed amiably with madame.

Madame, who together with innumerable old men and children inhabited the
inn, was young and pretty and intelligent--black hair, sallow and
symmetrical face, expressive mouth, slim and graceful limbs. Talking
the language, we endeavoured to make our forced company pleasant. That
other despatch rider, still steaming from the stove, sat beside a
charming Flemish woman, and endeavoured, amid shrieks of laughter, to
translate the jokes in an old number of 'London Opinion.'

A Welsh lad came in--a perfect Celt of nineteen, dark and lithe, with a
momentary smile and a wild desire to see India. Then some Cheshires
arrived. They were soaked and very weary. One old reservist staggered to
a chair. We gave him some brandy and hot water. He chattered
unintelligibly for a moment about his wife and children. He began to
doze, so his companion took him out, and they tottered along after their
company.

A dog of no possible breed belonged to the estaminet. Madame called him
"Automobile Anglais," because he was always rushing about for no
conceivable reason.

We were sorry when at 9.50 the lorry came for the bicycles. Our second
driver was an ex-London cabby, with a crude wit expressed in impossible
French that our hostess delightfully parried. On the way back he told me
how he had given up the three taxis he had owned to do "his bit," how
the other men had laughed at him because he was so old, how he had met
a prisoner who used to whistle for the taxis in Russell Square. We
talked also of the men in the trenches, of fright, and of the end of the
war. We reached D.H.Q. about 10.30, and after a large bowl of porridge I
turned in.