“The first thing a third-grade staff-officer learns is to speak respectfully of his superiors,” said the A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion at Ponsonby, who caught it with a bow.  Ponsonby is irrepressible and, in spite of his supercilious civilian airs, much is forgiven him.  He turned to the D.A.A.G. and said, “Hooper, you’ve forgotten to say grace.  For what we have not received”—­he added, with a meaning glance at a Stilton cheese which the A.A.G.’s wife has sent out from home and which remained on the sideboard—­“the Lord make us truly thankful.”  This was an allusion to the D.A.A.G.’s sacerdotal functions.  For the Adjutant-General and his staff, who know the numbers of all the Field Ambulances, can lay hands—­but not in the apostolic sense—­upon every chaplain attached thereto; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of them all and can admonish, deprive, and suspend.

The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction.  “I think we’ve fixed it up with those Red Cross drivers,” he said complacently.  The A.G.’s department had been wrestling with the disciplinary problem presented by these birds of passage on the lines of communication.  “We’ve decided that they are Army followers under section 176, sub-section 10, of the Army Act, and that you ‘follow’ the British Army from the moment you accept a pass to H.Q.  My chief called some of them together yesterday, and being in a benevolent humour told them that they were now under military law and might be sentenced to anything from seven days’ field-punishment to the punishment of death.  This was pour encourager les autres.  They looked quite thoughtful.”

“That’s a nice point,” commented Ponsonby pensively.  “Should an Army follower be hanged or is he entitled to be shot?  I put it to you,” he added, turning to the Judge-Advocate.  “I want counsel’s opinion.”

“I never give abstract opinions,” retorted the man of law.  “But the safest course would be to hang him first and shoot him afterwards.”

“Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel,” said Ponsonby.  “I’ll put you another problem.  Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower?  Because Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner” (this was notoriously untrue), “and I have a strong suspicion that he converts—­that’s a legal expression for fraud, isn’t it?—­his carrier-pigeons into pigeon-pie.  What is the penalty for fraudulent conversion of an Army follower?” Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as Aquila vulgaris, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode.  Unfortunately his pigeons are usually posted as “missing,” and go to some bourne from which no pigeon has ever been known to return.  Ponsonby glances suspiciously at Slingsby’s portly figure.