allowances) on the spot, and would he get on with it, please, and
indent through them for any materials required in the furtherance of
the good work?

William was furious. Confound the Staff! What did the blighted
red-tape-worms take him for? A blithering pedagogue in cap, gown
and horn spectacles? He kicked the only sound chair in the Mess to
splinters, cursed for two hours and sulked for twenty-four. After
which childish display he pulled himself together and indented on
Corps Educational Branch for four hundred treatises on elementary
Arabic, Arabic being the sole respectable subject in which he was
even remotely competent to instruct.

Corps H.Q. tore up his indent. It was absurd, they said, to
suppose that the entire regiment intended emigrating to Arabia on
demobilisation. William must get in touch with the men and find out
what practical everyday trades they were anxious to take up.

William was furious. "Isn't that the rotten Staff all over?" he fumed.
"Make an earnest and conscientious effort to give the poor soldiers a
leg-up with a vital, throbbing, commercial and classical _patois_ and
the brass-bound perishers choke you off! Poo-bah! Na poo!"

Then he pulled himself together again and indented on Corps
Educational Branch once more, this time for "Lions; menagerie; one."
Corps came down on William like St. Paul's Cathedral falling down
Ludgate Hill. What the thunder did he mean by it? Trying to be funny
with them, was he? He must explain himself instantly--Grrrr!

William was very calm. Couldn't understand what all this unseemly,