spectable mendacity about the
latter than the former. The cooks are always supposed to know if we
are changing camp by getting orders about rations in advance. Having
this slight advantage, they go out of their way to make rumours on
every sort of subject. How many scores of times the cooks have sent us
to the front I shouldn't like to say. Officers' servants of course
pick up scraps of information from their masters' tents; in the
process of transmission to the battery at large the original gets wide
variations. We are often just like kitchenmaids and footmen discussing
their betters. You will hear heated arguments going on as to the
meaning of some overheard remarks, and the odd thing is that it no
longer seems strange.

"_June 13._--... The moon was full this day, and to see it rising
sheer out of the level veldt was a thing to remember. For ten minutes
before there is a red glow on the horizon, which intensifies till a
burning orange rim shows above, and soon the whole circle is flaming
clear of the earth, only not a circle, but seemingly almost square
with rounded corners. Round its path on the veldt there is a broad
wash of dusty gold. A lot of us came out of the tents, and were
spell-bound by the sight. Every evening the sun goes down plumb into
the veldt out of a cloudless sky, and comes up just so in the morning.
While he is gone it is bitterly cold now, always with hard frost, but
in the middle of the day often very hot. I have never known such
extremes of temperature before.

"_June 16._--Yesterday was a red-letter day for me and Williams. We
got leave off afternoon stables, getting gunners to water and groom
our horses, and had from after dinner till 8.30 P.M. to ourselves.
That was the first time I have ever missed duty from any cause
whatever since I enlisted on January 3rd, so I think I deserved it. We
started off, feeling strangely free, and hardly knowing how to use our
freedom, for two hours is the longest interval from work one usually
gets. We determined to visit the Irish Hospital Camp, where four of
our chaps were sick. The Irish Hospital came out with us in the
_Montfort_, so we knew them all. We hired a carriage in the town(!)
and drove the rest of the way feeling like lords. We had a long talk
with the invalids, who were mostly doing well, in most comfortable
quarters, large roomy tents, with comfortable beds, and clean white
nurses going about. Pat Duffy turned up as a hospital orderly, looki