the tin lid rattled madly and the shell boxes jostled each other all over
the place. It was quite possible to leave our mess at peep o'day severely
Gothic in design, and to return at dewy eve to find it rakishly Rococo.

William, our Transport Officer and Mess President, was everlastingly piping
all hands on deck at unseemly hours to save the home and push it back into
shape; we were householders in the fullest sense of the term.

Before the War, William assures us, he was a bright young thing, full of
merry quips and jolly practical jokes, the life and soul of any party, but
what with the contortions of the mess and the vagaries of the transport
mules he had become a saddened man.

Between them--the mules and the mess--he never got a whole night in bod;
either the mules were having bad dreams, sleep-walking into strange lines
and getting themselves abhorred, or the field guns were on the job and the
mess had the jumps. If Hans, the Hun, had not been the perfect little
gentleman he is, and had dropped a shell anywhere near us (instead of
assiduously spraying a distant ridge where nobody ever was, is, or will be)
our mess would have been with Tyre and Sidon; but Hans never forgot himself
for a moment; it was our own side we distrusted. The Heavies, for instance.
The Heavies warped themselves laboriously into position behind our hill,
disguised themselves as gooseberry bushes, and gave an impression of the
crack of doom at 2 A.M. one snowy morning.

Our mess immediately broke out into St. Vitus's dance, and William piped
all hands on deck.

The Skipper, picturesquely clad in boots (gum, high) and a goat's skin,
flung himself on the east wing, and became an animated buttress. Albert