the day, infant schools were decanted on to the road under a beaming
vicar, to utter what we took to be patriotic sounds and wave
handkerchiefs.

Off duty, we fraternised with the inhabitants. The language was a
difficulty, of course; but a great deal can be done by mutual goodwill
and a few gestures. It would have warmed the heart of a philologist to
note the success with which a couple of kilted heroes from the banks
of Loch Lomond would sidle up to two giggling damosels of Hampshire at
the corner of the High Street, by the post office, and invite them
to come for a walk. Though it was obvious that neither party could
understand a single word that the other was saying, they never failed
to arrive at an understanding; and the quartette, having formed
two-deep, would disappear into a gloaming as black as ink, to inhale
the evening air and take sweet counsel together--at a temperature of
about twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

You ought to see us change guard. A similar ceremony takes place,
we believe, outside Buckingham Palace every morning, and draws a
considerable crowd; but you simply cannot compare it with ours. How
often does the guard at Buckingham Palace fix bayonets? Once! and
the thing is over. It is hardly worth while turning out to see. _We_
sometimes do it as much as seven or eight times before we get it
right, and even then we only stop because the sergeant-in-charge
is threatened with clergyman's sore throat. The morning Private
Mucklewame fixed his bayonet for the first time, two small boys stayed
away from school all day in order to see him unfix it when he came
off guard in the afternoon. Has any one ever done that at Buckingham
Palace?