nd farms and stations within two
hundred miles, bringing tuck-box after tuck-box containing the choicest
products of the home larders.

The red sun, lifting above the eastern hills, found long irregular
lines of horses straggling across dewy fields to water at the rushing
streams of the Manawatu River. On one bare-backed horse of every four
sat a trooper, clad sketchily in shirt and breeches tugged on hastily,
as a sergeant had called the roll. They played the fool as they
passed, laughing and chattering, losing their horses in their madness,
all making thorough nuisances of themselves and all atune with the
fresh glory of the dawn. Usually, during the day, in independent
troops of thirty or forty men, they wandered about the district, among
the pleasant suburban homes of Palmerston, along shady country roads or
up into the hills. They walked or cantered for an hour or so, and
then, selecting a likely-looking homestead, they would unsaddle and
unbridle their mounts and leave them to graze the succulent grass at
the sides of the road, or roll if they wished, while a man was put at
both ends of that stretch of road to prevent their straying. Then the
others would lie in the shade or sun themselves on the bank opposite
the homestead, sleeping, smoking, reading or playing cards. Scarcely
ever did the oracle fail to work. The door of the house would open and
a fair maid appear, anon, a mother and a sister. The first would come
tripping down the path to the soldiers and inquire:

"Mother says would you like some tea?"

"Well," they would reply, "it wouldn't be a bad idea, would it? But, I
say, wouldn't it be a lot of trouble?"

"Oh, not at all."

And she would skip away back to the house to the innards of which,
mother and sister, regarding the preamble as a mere formality, had
disappeared to get things under way. A brief interval was followed by
the appearance of large trays of cups, the whole of the household
crockery from the drawing-room, breakfast-room and kitchen, with scones
and cakes, and all the luxuries of the storeroom, and, perhaps, apples
from the barn. The good family, as is only in keeping with proper
hospitality, would join in the feast; and the disappearance of two or
three cheery troopers into the house to assist in washing up would end
one of those irresponsible, warm-hearted little scenes which were so
many in those far-away days of August '14. Another hour or so on the
march in the middl