ver
the place. It was quite possible to leave our mess at peep o'day severely
Gothic in design, and to return at dewy eve to find it rakishly Rococo.

William, our Transport Officer and Mess President, was everlastingly piping
all hands on deck at unseemly hours to save the home and push it back into
shape; we were householders in the fullest sense of the term.

Before the War, William assures us, he was a bright young thing, full of
merry quips and jolly practical jokes, the life and soul of any party, but
what with the contortions of the mess and the vagaries of the transport
mules he had become a saddened man.

Between them--the mules and the mess--he never got a whole night in bod;
either the mules were having bad dreams, sleep-walking into strange lines
and getting themselves abhorred, or the field guns were on the job and the
mess had the jumps. If Hans, the Hun, had not been the perfect little
gentleman he is, and had dropped a shell anywhere near us (instead of
assiduously spraying a distant ridge where nobody ever was, is, or will be)
our mess would have been with Tyre and Sidon; but Hans never forgot himself
for a moment; it was our own side we distrusted. The Heavies, for instance.
The Heavies warped themselves laboriously into position behind our hill,
disguised themselves as gooseberry bushes, and gave an impression of the
crack of doom at 2 A.M. one snowy morning.

Our mess immediately broke out into St. Vitus's dance, and William piped
all hands on deck.

The Skipper, picturesquely clad in boots (gum, high) and a goat's skin,
flung himself on the east wing, and became an animated buttress. Albert
Edward climbed aloft and sat on the tin lid, which was opening and shutting
at every pore. Mactavish put his shoulder to the south wall to keep it from
working round to the north. I clung to the pantry, which was coming adrift
from its parent stem, while William ran about everywhere, giving advice and
falling over things. The mess passed rapidly through every style of
architecture, from a Chinese pagoda to a Swiss chalet, and was on the point
of confusing itself with a Spanish castle when the Heavies switched off
their hate and went to bed. And not a second too soon. Another moment and I
should have dropped the pantry, Albert Edward would have been sea-sick, and
the Skipper would have let the east wing go west.

We pushed the mess back into shape, and went inside it for a peg of
something and a consultation.