"Help!" ejaculated Lettigne. "I don't care," he added. "I'm not going without my blinking trophy." He removed a pair of boots from the interior of an apoplectic-looking kit-bag and substituted the jagged piece of metal. "It weighs about half a ton, but it very nearly bagged Little Willie, and I want my people to see it." He tugged and strained at the straps. "Make 'em appreciate their little hopeful…. Ouf! There! I only hope this yarn about there being no porters anywhere isn't true."
Harcourt, who had reduced the contents of his suit-case in volume by the simple expedient of stamping on them, had finally succeeded in closing the lid.
"Never mind," he shouted. "What does anything matter so long's we're 'appy!" He brandished a cricket-bat and sang in his high, cracked tenor:
"Keep the home fires burning,
Oh, keep the home fires burning,
Keep the home fires burning…."
"I dunno how it goes on," he concluded, lapsing into speech again.
"'Cos we're all going on leave!" roared Matthews. "That's how it ends. That's how everything ends. Ain't it all right?" He closed his chest with a bang and sat on the top with his hands in his pockets, drumming his heels against the sides. "Snooks!" he ejaculated, "I haven't felt like this since I was a mere lad."
"What are you going to do on leave?" queried the tall sandy-haired
Midshipman popularly known as "Wonk."
"Do?" echoed Matthews. "Do?" He allowed his imagination full rein for a moment. "Well," he said, "by way of a start I shall make my soldier brother take me to dinner somewhere where there's a band and fairies in low-necked dresses with diamond ta-rarras on their heads."
"That sounds pretty dull," objected Mordaunt, affectionately burnishing the head of a cleek with a bit of emery paper. "Is that all you're going to do?"
"Not 't all. After dinner I shall smoke a cigar—a mild one, you know—and then we'll go to a 'Revoo' with more fairies. Lots of 'em," he added ruminatingly, "skipping about like young stag-beetles—you know the kind of thing——" The visionary got down off his chest, and, plucking the sides of his monkey-jacket between finger and thumb, pirouetted gracefully amid the scattered suit-cases and litter of clothes. "Comme ça!" he concluded.