The gaunt man sat up in his chair and by what mesmeric magic it happened I
know not, but before my eyes grew the living image of the gross, shapeless
creature who had put me to bed in wringing wet sheets.

"And when you complained, he looked like this--eh?"

He did look like that. Bleary-eyed, drooping-mouthed, vacant. I recollected
that the fat miscreant had the middle of his upper lip curiously sunken
into the space of two missing front teeth. The middle of Colonel Lackaday's
upper lip was sucked in.

"And he said: 'What would you have, Monsieur? _C'est la guerre?_'"

The horrible fat man, hundreds of miles away from the front, with every
convenience for drying sheets, had said those identical words. And in the
same greasy, gasping tone.

I gaped at the mimetic miracle. It was then that the memory of the
eight-year-old child's travesty of myself flashed through my mind.

"Pardon me," said I, "but haven't you turned this marvellous gift of yours
to--well to practical use?"

He grinned in his honest, wide-mouthed way, showing his incomparable teeth.

"Don't you think," said he, "I'm the model of a Colonel of the Rifles?"

He grinned again at the cloud of puzzlement on my face, and rose holding
out his hand.