movements from one country to the other, three times he had supposed
he had finished with Italy and was due back in France; each time
he had got comfortably across the frontier into France he had been
recalled to Italy. Never once had he the sense to cross the frontier
on the stroke of midnight, and so make a complete twenty-four hours
of it on each side, and all the time the rate of exchange was varying
by a fraction. But, as George said, it wasn't himself who was
manipulating the rate of exchange as between the two countries, and
courtesy to allied nations prevented him from manipulating the trains.

It was towards teatime when he satisfied me of his own innocence on
these points; but don't run away with the idea that by this time we
were well on with the business. We had barely as much as started. How
are you to fix the "date of journey" in such a manner as to give the
traveller a clear night for accommodation in one country, or a clear
day for subsistence in another, when he leaves his home at 5.15 P.M.,
arrives at the end of the first stage at 6.10 P.M., sleeps in a hotel
till 11 P.M., gets in the train at thirty-five minutes past, crosses
the frontier at 2 P.M. on the following day, arrives at his Italian
destination at 5 A.M. on the morning after that, and then, if you
please, goes to bed in another hotel? Old soldier though I am, there
didn't seem to me to be a single line in a single column which I could
satisfactorily fill in. True, there was the space for "Remarks," but
our Mr. Booth was quite sure that my remarks were not what the Pay
People called for.

By this time I was for giving in, but George was now the persistent
one. It was never his pocket he cared for; it was just one of his
confounded principles not to be beaten by anything, not even an Army
Form. I expressed some surprise that in the course of this tour of