dreams towards my revolver. I clutched it in sweating terror, and
stared round the dug-out with my heart going like a machine-gun. It
was not, however, a Hun counter-attack. It was David calling for his
servant. As the first ray of the sun lights the Eastern sky David
calls for his servant. His servant is a North-countryman. Sleeping far
off in some noxious haunt, he hears David's voice and instantly begins
to speak. His voice comes swelling towards us, talking of boots and
tunics. As he reaches the dug-out door he becomes deafening. He and
David have a shouting match. He kicks over a petrol-tin full of water,
smashes my shaving mirror, and sits on my feet while picking up the
bits.

Meanwhile David is standing on his bed and jodelling, while his batman
shrieks to him that his wife said in her last letter to him that if
he doesn't get a leaf soon the home'll be bruk up. Then David starts
slapping soap on to his face like a bill-sticker with a paste-brush.
His servant drops a field boot on to my stomach, trips over an empty
biscuit-tin and is heard grooming a boot without.

David now strops his razor. It is one of those self-binding safety
razors which is all covered with cog-wheels and steam-gauges and
levers and valves. You feed the strop into it like paper into
a printing-press, and it eats up the leather as low people eat
spaghetti, making all the time a noise like a mowing-machine. David
loves that. He whistles gay tunes while it happens. He whistles while
he shaves. He cannot whistle while brushing his teeth, but he brushes
his teeth as a man might wash down a cab in a large yard with plenty
of room.

The moment it is over he whistles again. Then he does deep breathing