"Ah, it is the old families who understand true courtesy!
"He had nearly a hundred dogs. They were a little too much inbred, perhaps, and therefore over-nervous, but good dogs. Monsieur le Comte gave me the gardener's cottage to live in—the gardener is in the trenches at Verdun—and I spent two happy months teaching the dogs."
"That's why my letters never reached you, then," said Horace. "I always wrote to our old address."
"I think the landlady died when I was in the hospital," answered Croquier. "She fell ill soon after you left. And, you remember, she was very old."
"She was old," the boy agreed. "But why didn't you ever write to me?"
"I did, many times. Naturally, I wrote to the Motorcycle Corps of the Fourth Army, but I never received a response."
"Of course," said the boy thoughtfully, "that wouldn't reach me. My old motor-cycle has been idle for several months. When I found that there wasn't any more dispatch work to do, I took a military telephone course at the camp school."
"So you're a telephonist, now!"
"And you're a dog general!"