“When’ll I have to go, do you think?” asked Peter as they went out.

“Oh, I don’t know.  In a day or two.  You’ll have to hang about, for the order may come any time, and I don’t know how or when they’ll send you.”

Peter did hang about, for ten days, with his kit packed.  His recently acquired calm forsook him about the sixth day, and on the tenth he was entirely mutinous.  At lunch he voiced his grievances to the general mess.

“Look here, you men,” he said, “I’m fed up to the back teeth.  I’ve hung round this blessed camp for more than a week waiting for that infernal movement order, and I’m hanged if I’m going to stay in any more.  It’s a topping afternoon.  Who’ll come down the river to La Bouille, or whatever it is called?”

Harold volunteered.  “That’s a good line, padre.  I want to go there myself.  Are the boats running now?”

“Saw ’em yesterday,” volunteered somebody, and it was settled.

The two of them spent a decent afternoon on the river, and at Harold’s insistence went on back right up to town.  They dined and went to a cinema, and got back to camp about midnight.  Graham struck a match and looked at the board in the anteroom.  “May as well see if there is anything for me,” he said.  There was, of course.  He tore the envelope open.  “Good Lord, skipper!” he said.  “Here’s my blessed movement order, to report at the Gare du Vert at eight p.m. this very day.  I’m only four hours too late.  What the dickens shall I do?”

Harold whistled.  “Show it me,” he said. “’The following personnel to report at Gare du Vert ... at 8 p.m. 28th inst’” he read.  “You’re for it, old bird,” he continued cheerfully.  “But what rot!  Look here, it was handed in to my orderly-room at six-thirty.  You’d have hardly had time to get there at any rate.”

Graham looked over his shoulder.  “That’s so,” he said.  “But what’ll I do now?”

“Haven’t a notion,” said the other, “except that they’ll let you know quick enough.  Don’t worry—­that’s the main thing.  If they choke you off, tell ’em it came too late to get to the station.”

Peter meditated this in silence, and in some dismay.  He saw visions of courts-martial, furious strafing, and unholy terrors.  He was to be forgiven, for he was new to comic opera; and besides, when a page of Punch falls to one in real life, one hardly realises it till too late.  But it was plain that nothing could be done that night, and he went to bed with what consolation he could derive from the cheerful Harold.

Next morning his breakfast was hardly over when an orderly came in.  Harold had been earlier than usual, and had finished and gone out.  “Captain Graham, sir?” queried the man.  “Captain Harold’s compliments, and a telephone message has just come in that you are to report to H.Q. 10th Group as quickly as possible.”

Peter brushed himself up, and outwardly cheerful but inwardly quaking, set off.  Half an hour’s walk brought him to the place, a little office near a wharf is a tangle of trolley lines.  He knocked, went in, came to attention, and saluted.