Colonel Levin let air lispingly out between his teeth.
"No. 16 Draft not off yet . . . Dear, dear! Dear, dear! . . . We shall be strafed to hell by First Army. . . ." He used the word hell as if he had first wrapped it in eau-de-cologned cotton-wadding.
Tietjens, on his feet, knew this fellow very well: a fellow who had been a very bad Society water-colour painter of good family on the mother's side: hence the cavalry gadgets on his shoulders. Would it then be good . . . say good taste to explode? He let the sergeant-major do it. Sergeant-Major Cowley was of the type of N.C.O. who carried weight because he knew ten times as much about his job as any Staff officer. The sergeant-major explained that it had been impossible to get off the draft earlier. The colonel said:
"But surely, sergeant-majah . . ."
The sergeant-major, now a deferential shopwalker in a lady's store, pointed out that they had had urgent instructions not to send up the draft without the four hundred Canadian Railway Service men who were to come from Etaples. These men had only arrived that evening at 5.30 . . . at the railway station. Marching them up had taken three-quarters of an hour. The colonel said:
"But surely, sergeant-majah . . ."
Old Cowley might as well have said "madam" as "sir" to the red hat-band. . . . The four hundred had come with only what they stood up in. The unit had had to wangle everything: boots, blankets, toothbrushes, braces, rifles, iron-rations, identity disks out of the depot store. And it was now only twenty-one twenty. . . . Cowley permitted his commanding officer at this point to say:
"You must understand that we work in circumstances of extreme difficulty, sir. . . ."
The graceful colonel was lost in an absent contemplation of his perfectly elegant knees.
"I know, of course. . . ." he lisped. "Very difficult . . ." He brightened up to add: "But you must admit you're unfortunate. . . . You must admit that. . . ." The weight settled, however, again on his mind.