That night, strolling homewards in the dark immersed in thought, he inadvertently took a pipe out of his pocket and lit it.  An A.P.M. who had been sleuthing him for half-a-mile leapt upon him, snatched the pipe and two or three teeth out of his mouth and returned him to France by the next boat.

* * * * *

His groom, beaming welcome, met him at the railhead with the horses.

“Hello, old thing, cheerio and all the rest of it,” Huntsman whinnied lovingly.

Miss Muffet rubbed her velvet muzzle against his pocket.  “Brought a lump of sugar for a little girl?” she rumbled.

He mounted her and headed across country, Miss Muffet pig-jumping and capering to show what excellent spirits she enjoyed.

Two brigades of infantry were under canvas in Mud Gully, their cook fires winking like red eyes.  The guards clicked to attention and slapped their butts as the Babe went by.  A subaltern bobbed out of a tent and shouted to him to stop to tea.  “We’ve got cake,” he lured, but the Babe went on.

A red-hat cantered across the stubble before him waving a friendly crop, “Pip” Vibart the A.P.M. homing to H.Q.  “Evening, boy!” he holloaed; “come up and Bridge to-morrow night,” and swept on over the hillside.  A flight of aeroplanes, like flies in the amber of sunset, droned overhead en route for Hunland.  The Babe waved his official cap at them:  “Good hunting, old dears.”

They had just started feeding up in the regimental lines when he arrived; the excited neighing of five hundred horses was music to his ears.  His brother subalterns hailed his return with loud and exuberant noises, made disparaging remarks about the smartness of his clothes, sat on him all over the floor and rumpled him.  On sighting the Babe, The O’Murphy went mad and careered round the table wriggling like an Oriental dancer, uttering shrill yelps of delight; presently he bounced out of the window, to enter some minutes later by the same route, and lay the offering of a freshly slain rat at his best beloved’s feet.

At this moment the skipper came in plastered thick with the mud of the line, nodded cheerfully to his junior sub and instantaneously fell upon the buttered toast.

“Have a good time, Son?” he mumbled.  “How’s merrie England?”

“Oh, England’s all right, Sir,” said the Babe, tickling The O’Murphy’s upturned tummy—­“quite all right; but it’s jolly to be home again among one’s ain folk.”

PATLANDER.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  OUT OF REACH.

“Just ask Dr. Jones to run round to my place right away.  Our cook’s fallen downstairs, broke her leg; the housemaid’s got chicken-pox; and my two boys have been knocked down by a taxi.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but the doctor was blown up in yesterday’s air-raid and he won’t be down for a week.”]

* * * * *