I said:
"You're making a toil of a pleasure, Percy."
And he said:
"No, I'm not. Whenever I go to sleep, I dream of my Tommy in the trenches; and the parcels are being given out by Lord French, and my Tommy stretches up his hand eagerly and hopefully; but there's no parcel for him. And he shrugs his shoulders and just bears it, and goes back to his gun; but it's simply hell for me."
"What's he like?" I asked, to get Percy minimus off the sad side of it.
"Huge and filthy," said Percy minimus. "He has a brown face and a big, black moustache and one of the new steel hats; and he's plastered with mud, and his eyes roll with craving for cigarettes and chocolates."
"You needn't worry," I said. "He'll get his parcel all right. Of course, they won't miss him."
"What a fool you are, Cornwallis!" he answered, still sniffing. "Can't you see that, if I don't send a parcel, there will be one parcel less; and so one man will go without who would otherwise have had a parcel; and that man will be this one I see in my dreadful dreams."
"If you put it like that," I said--"of course."
Then he had another beastly thought.