nness
becomes second nature.

All the country is covered with snow--it's brilliant clear weather,
more like America than Europe. I'm feeling strong as a horse, ever so
much better than I felt when on leave. Life is really tremendously worth
living, in spite of the war.

XLII

January 28th.

I'm back at the battery, sitting by a cosy fire. I might be up at
Kootenay by the look of my surroundings. I'm in a shack with a really
truly floor, and a window looking out on moonlit whiteness. If it wasn't
for the tapping of the distant machine guns--tapping that always sounds
to me like the nailing up of coffins--I might be here for pleasure. In
imagination I can see your great ship, with all its portholes aglare,
ploughing across the darkness to America. The dear sailor brothers I
can't quite visualise; I can only see them looking so upright and pale
when we said good-bye. It's getting late and the fire's dying. I'm half
asleep; I've not been out of my clothes for three nights. I shall tell
myself a story of the end of the war and our next meeting--it'll last
from the time that I creep into my sack until I close my eyes. It's a
glorious life.

Yours very lovingly,
CON

XLIII

January 31st, 1917.

DEAR MR. AND MRS. M.:

It was extremely good of you to remember me. I got back from leave in
London on the 26th and found the cigarettes waiting for me. One hasn't
got an awful lot of pleasures left, but smoking is one of them. I feel
particularly doggy when I open my case and find my initials on them.

I expect you'll have heard all the news of my leave long before this
reaches you. We had a splendid time and the greatest of luck. My sailor
brothers were with me all but two days, and my people were in England
only a few days before I arrived.

This is a queer adventure for a peaceable person like myself--it blots
out all the past and reduces the future to a speck. One hardly hopes
that things will ever be different, but looks forward to interminable
years of carrying on. My leave rather corrected that frame of mind; it
came as a surprise to be forced to realise that not all the world was
living under orders on woman less, childless battlefields. But we don't
need any pity--we manage our good times, and are sorry for the men who
aren't here, for it's a wonderful thing to have been chosen to
sacrifice and perhaps to die that the world of the fut