andlady was delighted. "Not half feeding you;
that's a game," she said. "And you going to fight for your country!
But wait till you see the dishes I'll make out of the rations when
they come."

The rations came. In the early morning a barrow piled with eatables
was dragged through our street, and the "ration fatigue" party, full
of the novelty of a new job, yelled in chorus, "Bring out your dead,
ladies; rations are 'ere!"

"What have you got?" asked my landlady, going to the door. "What are
you supposed to leave for the men? Nothing's too good for them that's
going to fight for their country."

"Dead rats," said the ration-corporal with a grin.

"Don't be funny. What are my men to get?"

"Each man a pound of fresh meat, one and a half pounds of bread, two
taters, two ounces of sugar, and an ounce of tea and three ounces of
cheese. And, besides this, every feller gets a tin of jam once in four
days."

This looks well on paper, but pot and plate make a difference in the
proposition. Army cheese runs to rind rapidly, and a pound of beef is
often easily bitten to the bone: sometimes, in fact, it is all
bone and gristle, and the ravages of cooking minimise its bulk in
a disheartening way. One and a half pound of bread is more than the
third of a big loaf, but minus butter it makes a featureless repast.
Breakfast and tea without butter and milk does not always make a
dainty meal.

Even the distribution of rations leaves much to be desired; the
fatigue party, well-intentioned and sympathetic though it be, often
finds itself short of provisions. This may in many cases be due to
unequal distribution; an ounce of beef too much to each of sixteen men
leaves the seventeenth short of meat. This may easily happen, as the
ration party has never any means of weighing the food: it is nearly
always served out by guesswork. But sometimes the landladies help in
the distribution by bringing out scales and weighing the provisions.
One lady in our street always weighed the men's rations, and saw that
those under her care got the exact allowance. Never would she take any
more than her due, and never less. But a few days ago, when weighing
sugar and tea, a blast of wind upset the scales, and a second
allowance met with a similar fate. Sugar and tea littered the
pavement, and finally the woman supplied her soldiers from the
household stores. She now leaves the work of distribution in the hands
of the ration party, and takes what is gi