“I’m getting up to all these little dodges,” said Lollie modestly. “I know the way things run this side now a heap better’n I do in England.”
But all his knowledge did not save them a horribly uncomfortable night in an overcrowded compartment, and even when Bullivant dropped off at his station two others got in. Lollie reached his station only to be told his Division had moved, that to find them he must go back by train thirty kilometres, change, and proceed to another railhead and inquire there. He was finally dumped off at his railhead in the shivery dawn—“always seems to be an appalling lot of daybreak work about these stunts somehow,” as he remarked disgustedly—and had a subsequent series of slow-dragging adventures in his final stages of the journey to the battalion by way of a lift from the supply officer’s car and a motor lorry to Refilling Point, a sleep there on some hay bales, a further jolty ride on the ration waggons towards the trenches, and a last tramp up with the ration party. The battalion had just moved in to rather a quiet part of the line, and were occupying the support trenches, and Lollie found the H.Q. mess established in a commodious dug-out, very comfortably furnished.
“Yes, sir,” he said, in answer to a question from the C.O., “and I tell you I’m real glad to be home again. I’ve been kicking round the country like a lost dog for days, and I feel more unwashed and disgruntled than if I’d just come out of a push.”
The door-curtain of sacking pushed aside, and the Padre came in. “Ha, Lollie. Glad to have you back again,” he said, shaking hands warmly. “Mess has been quite missing you. Sorry for your own sake you’re here, of course, but——”
“You needn’t be, Padre,” said Lollie cheerfully. “I was just saying I’m glad to be back. And ’pon my word it’s true. It’s quite good to be home here again.”
“Home!” said the Padre and the Acting-Adjutant together, and laughed. “I like that.”
“Well, it is,” said Lollie stoutly. “Anyway, it feels like it to me.”
That feeling apparently was driven home in the course of the next hour or two. His servant showed him to his dug-out, which he was to share with the second in command, had a portable bath and a dixie full of boiling water for him, his valise spread on a comfortable stretcher-bed of wire netting on a wooden frame, clean shirt and things laid out, everything down to soap and towel and a packet of his own pet brand of cigarettes ready to his hand. Lollie pounced on the cigarettes. “Like a fool I didn’t take enough to last me,” he said, lighting up and drawing a long and deep breath and exhaling slowly and luxuriously. “And I couldn’t get ’em over the other side for love or money.”
While he stripped and got ready for his bath, his servant hovered round shaking out the things he took off and giving him snatches of gossip about the battalion. Lollie saw him eyeing the exceedingly dull buttons on his tunic and laughed. “Rather dirty, aren’t they?” he said. “I’m afraid I forgot ’em most of the time I was over there. And I hate cleaning buttons anyhow; always get more of the polish paste on the tunic than on the buttons.”