his badges made him welcome; and yet that, nevertheless, it was not he,
Peter Graham, that they welcomed, or at least not his type. He wondered
if padres in France were different from priests in England. He turned
over the unknown Drennan in his mind. Was it because he was a good priest
that the men liked him, or because they had discovered the man in the
parson?

The waiter brought in the breakfast--porridge, fish, toast, and the
rest--and they fell to, a running fire of comments going on all the time.
Donovan had had Japanese marmalade somewhere, and thought it better than
this. The Major wouldn't touch the beastly margarine, but Jenks thought
it quite as good as butter if taken with marmalade, and put it on nearly
as thickly as his toast. Peter expanded in the air of camaraderie, and
when he leaned back with a cigarette, tunic unbuttoned and cap tossed up
on the rack, he felt as if he had been in the Army for years. He
reflected how curious that was. The last two or three years or so of Boy
Scouts and hospitals and extra prayer-meetings, attended by the people
who attended everything else, seemed to have faded away. There was hardly
a gap between that first war evening which he remembered so clearly and
this. It was a common experience enough, and probably due to the fact
that, whereas everything else had made little impression, he had lived
for this moment and been extraordinarily impressed by that Sunday. But he
realised, also, that it was due as much to his present companions. They
had, seemingly, accepted him as he had never been accepted before. They
asked practically no questions. So far as he could see, he made no
difference to them. He felt as if he were at last part of a great
brotherhood, in which, chiefly, one worried about nothing more important
than Japanese marmalade and margarine.

"We're almost there, boys," said Bevan, peering out of window.