individual destined that very morning to leave for the Army in France.

Peter at last, then, was free to walk up the platform, and seek the rest
of his luggage that had come on from the hotel with the porter. He was
free, that is, if one disregarded the kit hung about his person, or
which, despite King's Regulations, he carried in his hands. But free or
not, he could not find his luggage. At 7.30 it struck him that at least
he had better find his seat. He therefore entered a corridor and began
pilgrimage. It was seemingly hopeless. The seats were filled with coats
or sticks or papers; every type of officer was engaged in bestowing
himself and his goods; and the general atmosphere struck him as being
precisely that which one experiences as a fresher when one first enters
hall for dinner at the 'Varsity. The comparison was very close.
First-year men--that is to say, junior officers returning from their
first leave--were the most encumbered, self-possessed, and asserting;
those of the second year, so to say, usually got a corner-seat and looked
out of window; while here and there a senior officer, or a subaltern with
a senior's face, selected a place, arranged his few possessions, and got
out a paper, not in the Oxford manner, as if he owned the place, but in
the Cambridge, as if he didn't care a damn who did.

Peter made a horrible hash of it. He tried to find a seat with all his
goods in his hands, not realising that they might have been deposited
anywhere in the train, and found when it had started, since, owing to a
particular dispensation of the high gods, everything that passed the
barrier for France got there. He made a dive for one place and sat in it,
never noting a thin stick in the corner, and he cleared out with enormous
apologies when a perfectly groomed Major with an exceedingly pleasant
manner mentioned that it was his seat, and carefully put the stick
elsewhere as soon as Peter had gone. Finally, at the end of a carriage,