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[Illustration: PLAYING SMALLER.

THE KAISER MAKES A CHANGE OF INSTRUMENT.]

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THE MUD LARKS.

When we have finished slaying for the day, have stropped our gory
sabres, hung our horses up to dry and are sitting about after mess,
girths slackened and pipes aglow, it is a favourite pastime of ours to
discuss what we are going to do after the War.

William, our mess president and transport officer, says frankly,
"Nothing." Three years' continuous struggle to keep the mess going in
whiskey and soda and the officers' kit down to two hundred and fifty
pounds per officer has made an old man of him, once so full of bright
quips and conundrums. The moment HINDENBURG chucks up the sponge off
goes William to Chelsea Hospital, there to spend the autumn of his days
pitching the yarn and displaying his honourable scars gained in many a
bloody battle in the mule lines.

So much for William. The Skipper, who is as sensitive to climate as a
lily of the hot-house, prattles lovingly during the summer months of
selling ice-creams to the Eskimos, and during the winter months of
peddling roast chestnuts in Timbuctoo. MacTavish and the Babe propose,
under the euphonious _noms de commerce_ of Vavaseur and Montmorency, to