The general said:
"You don't say you have only two tunics? . . . Have you no mess clothes?"
Tietjens said:
"Yes, sir, I've my blue things. I shall be all right for to-night. . . . But almost everything else I possessed was stolen from my kit when I was in hospital. . . . Even Sylvia's two pair of sheets. . . ."
"But hang it all," the general exclaimed, "you don't mean to say you've spaffled all your father left you?"
Tietjens said:
"I thought fit to refuse what my father left me owing to the way it was left. . . ."
The general said:
"But, good God! . . . Read that!" He tossed the small sheet of paper at which he had been looking across the table. It fell face downwards. Tietjens read, in the minute handwriting of the general's:
"Colonel's horse: Sheets: Jesus Christ: Wannop girl: Socialism?"