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g the day. "Railway Staff Officer? Yes, sir, straight in here, sir." A very pale youth, in the cleanest of kit, whitest of collars, and with the pinkest of pink impertinences round his cap and neck. He never looked up from the paper on which he was writing as he opened the following conversation-- _Pale Youth._ "What can I do for you?" _Applicant._ "I am here under telegraphic instructions." _P. Y. (taking telegram proffered)_ "Never heard of you." _A._ "You must have some record of that wire!" _P. Y._ "I never sent it. It must have been sent by the Railway Staff Officer. He's asleep now. Come back in the morning and see him!" _A. (furiously)_ "You d----d young cub!--is this the way you treat your seniors? What do you belong to?" _P. Y. (Jumping up nervously)_ "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; I thought you were one of those helpless Yeomanry officers. They are the plague of our lives. I will go and wake the R.S.O." [_Disappears. Returns in five minutes._] _P. Y._ "The R.S.O. says that you must report to the office of the line of communications. They may have orders about you. You will find the brigade-major in a saloon carriage on the third siding outside the Rosmead line." [_Salutes._] We go out into the night again, wondering if perdition can equal De Aar for miserable discomfort, and De Aar officialdom for inconsequence. The third siding, indeed! It was an hour before the saloon was found in that labyrinth of cast-iron. The brigade-major was there, a wretched worn object of a man, plodding by the eccentric light of a tallow dip through the day's telegrams. Poor wretch! he earns his pittance as thoroughly as any of us do. Again we drew blank. "Never heard of you." All we could get out of him was, "You had better bed down in the station and await events." Poor devil! so worn with work and worry that he looked as if a simple little De Aar dust-devil would snap his backbone if it touched him. So we were turned adrift again in the old iron heap to swell the army of vagrants who live by their wits upon the communications. It was about two in the morning before we found our servants. The soldier servant is a jewel--but a jewel with some blemishes. If you tell him to do anything "by numbers," he will do it splendidly; but he does not consider it part of his duty to think for himself, consequently you have always to think both for yourself and your servant, and that is why on this occasion we found o
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