cornucopias. Imitation marble in the hall. Gilded tassels. Alas! my kit
has not yet arrived. It's awful. And the anxiety to draw these things is
feverish. We go so soon.

When you look out of the rooms into the courtyard, you see our waggons
and draft-horses, and the men eating bully-beef like wolves. Some of
them (including Sergeant Cart) are shaving and washing stripped to the
waist. The others just tear at the bread and beef and munch without
speaking. Corporal Nutley and Corporal Field are pointing with their
tea-mugs to the old gateway and the ducks and things. They all evidently
love it. They sleep in the barns amongst the hay. The sun is warm and
sleepy.


_June 8._

[Sidenote: THE CHATEAU-FARM]

Still at this lovely château-farm, and Life seems to have gone into a
trance. I wake up and look out into the courtyard and the sunlight, on
geese, Muscovy ducks, pigs, and pigeons, and it all feels like a
half-forgotten story. There are traces of the Huns, but all that seems
unreal. You hear the boom! boom! boom! of the guns all day, and more so
at night; but nothing can disturb the extraordinary remote peace of this
château. The very stones in the courtyard look more friendly and more
countrified than ordinary stones, as if some ancient fairy lived here.
There's no doubt at all that the men feel it. Several of them have said
how they like the place. They think it's a little bit like ----shire. I
think I know what they mean.