"For Headquarters of the Army Corps, and he's not the only one that
says it. There's--you know him--I've forgotten his name--he's like
Galle, but he isn't Galle--there's some one in his family who is
Some One. Anyway, he knows all about it."

"Then what?" With hungry eyes they form a circle around the
story-teller.

"Egypt, you say, we shall go to? Don't know it. I know there were
Pharaohs there at the time when I was a kid and went to school, but
since--"

"To Egypt!" The idea finds unconscious anchorage in their minds.

"Ah, non," says Blaire, "for I get sea-sick. Still, it doesn't last,
sea-sickness. Oui, but what would my good lady say?"

"What about it? She'll get used to it. You see niggers, and streets
full of big birds, like we see sparrows here."

"But haven't we to go to Alsace?"

"Yes," says the post-orderly, "there are some who think so at the
Pay-office."

"That'd do me well enough."

But common sense and acquired experience regain the upper hand and
put the visions to flight. We have been told so often that we were
going a long way off, so often have we believed it, so often been