tion of a bursting shell above the
Grapevine crossing. "If anybody finds any letter-paper and doesn't want
it--"

A chorus arose. "Sorry we haven't got any!"--"I have got some--lovely!
But I've got a girl, too."--"Sorry, sergeant, but it isn't pale blue,
scented with forget-me-nots."--"Just _think_ her a letter--think it out
loud! Wait, I'll show you how. _Darling Chloe_--Don't get angry! He's
most gotten over getting angry and it becomes him beautifully--_Darling
Chloe_--What're _you_ coming into it for, Billy Maydew? 'Don't tease
him!'--My son, he loves to be teased. All lovers love to be teased.
_Darling Chloe._ It is Sunday morning. The swans are warbling your name
and so are half a dozen pesky Yankee Parrotts. The gentle zephyrs speak
of thee, and so does the hot simoom that blows from Chickahominy,
bringing an inordinate number of mosquitoes. I behold thy sinuous grace
in the curls of smoke from Reilly's battery, and also in the slide and
swoop of black buzzards over a multitude of dead horses in the woods.
Darling Chloe, we are stranded on an ant heap which down here they call
a hill, and why in hell we don't swim the river is more than at the
moment I can tell you. It's rumoured that Old Jack's attending church in
the neighbourhood, but we are left outside to praise God from whom all
blessings flow. Darling Chloe, this company is not so unpopular with me
as once it was. War is teaching it a damned lot, good temper and pretty
ways and what not--It is teaching it! Who says it is not?--Darling
Chloe, if you could see how long and lean and brown we are and how
ragged we are and how lousy--Of course, of course, sergeant, you're not!
Only the high private in the rear rank is, and even he says he's
not--Darling Chloe, if I could rise like one of those damned crows down
there and sail over these damned flats and drop at your feet in God's
country beyond the mountains, you wouldn't walk to church to-day with
me. You'd turn up your pretty little nose, and accept the arm of some
damned bombproof--Look out! What's the matter here? 'The last straw!
shan't slander her!'--I'm not slandering her. I don't believe either
she'd do it. Needn't all of you look so glum! I'll take it back. We
know, God bless every last woman of them, that they don't do it! They
haven't got any more use for a bombproof than we have!--I can't retract
handsomer than that!--Darling Chloe, the Company's grown amiable, but it
don't think much so far of its