“I was in hospital seven weeks and never saw one,” said Jenks.

“Good heavens!” said Graham.  “But I’ve been trying to get out for all these years, and I was always told that every billet was taken and that there were hundreds on the waiting list.  Last December the Chaplain-General himself showed me a list of over two hundred names.”

“Don’t know where they get to, then, do you, Bevan?” asked Jenks.

“No,” said the Major, “unless they keep ’em at the base.”

“Plenty down at Rouen, anyway,” said Donovan.  “A sporting little blighter I met at the Brasserie Opera told me he hadn’t anything to do, anyway.”

“I shall be a padre in the next war,” said Jenks, stretching out his legs.  “A parade on Sunday, and you’re finished for the week.  No orderly dog, no night work, and plenty of time for your meals.  Padres can always get leave too, and they always come and go by Paris.”

Donovan laughed, and glanced sideways at Peter.  “Stow it, Jenks,” he said.  “Where you for, padre?” he asked.

“I’ve got to report at Rouen,” said Peter.  “I was wondering if you were there.”

“No such luck now,” returned the other.  “But it’s a jolly place.  Jenko’s there.  Get him to take you out to Duclair.  You can get roast duck at a pub there that melts in your mouth.  And what’s that little hotel near the statue of Joan of Arc, Jenks, where they still have decent wine?”

Peter was not to learn yet awhile, for at that moment the little door opened and a waiter looked in.  “Breakfast, gentlemen?” he asked.

“Oh, no,” said Jenks.  “Waiter, I always bring some rations with me; I’ll just take a cup of coffee.”

The man grinned.  “Right-o, sir,” he said.  “Porridge, gentlemen?”

He disappeared, leaving the door open and, Donovan opening a newspaper, Graham stared out of window to wait.  From the far corners came scraps of conversation, from which he gathered that Jenks and the Major were going over the doings of the night before.  He caught a word or two, and stared the harder out of window.

Outside the English country was rushing by.  Little villas, with back-gardens running down to the rail, would give way for a mile or two to fields, and then start afresh.  The fog was thin there, and England looked extraordinarily homely and pleasant.  It was the known; he was conscious of rushing at fifty miles an hour into the unknown.  He turned over the scrappy conversation of the last few minutes, and found it savoured of the unknown.  It was curious the difference uniform made.  He felt that these men were treating him more like one of themselves than men in a railway-carriage had ever treated him before; that somehow even his badges made him welcome; and yet that, nevertheless, it was not he, Peter Graham, that they welcomed, or at least not his type.  He wondered if padres in France were different from priests in England.  He turned over the unknown Drennan in his mind.  Was it because he was a good priest that the men liked him, or because they had discovered the man in the parson?