[Illustration: THE FIRST POTATO-LEAF!]

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=THE WATCH DOGS.=

LXI.

My Dear CHARLES,--Have I ever, in the course of these SECRET and
CONFIDENTIAL despatches, called your lordship's attention to the
existence, the very marked existence, of our Hubert, "the little
Captain," who, being out of the battle for the moment, relies upon
argument for argument's sake to keep up his circulation? It
has been said of him that he spends his office time in writing
superior letters to his subordinates and insubordinate letters to
his superiors; but that, I think, is over harsh. In any case, as
he has now run short of grievances, and the authorities of the
B.E.F. regard him as a joke and like him best when his little
temper is hot, his fights out here have for some time lacked
reality. I fancy that he was merely in search of a _casus belli_
when, being on leave in the U.K., he conceived the idea of a day's
extension and stepped round to the War Office to demand same as of
right.

But the War Office, Charles, is not as other places and War
Officers are not like the common sort. Hubert, arriving in his
best fighting trim, was at once ejected by the policeman at the
door. He underestimated the importance of that official and