"However, after dinner I sat disconsolate while the others, I mean my brother officers, held joyful converse with many sheets of closely written note paper. It is true that I was eating some frosted fruit sent to the major by his loving wife. Very near me on the table stood a large box of green sweets called "Crême de Mint," but they were sent to Wharton by his fiancée. I was very sad, and my mind rushed back to that famous picture of an aged lady twanging a harp with her eye fixed upon the portrait of her dead husband.
"Suddenly a look of hope must have crept over my features, as my eyes became fixed upon the table cloth, for thereon I read your charming notice. We always prefer the London Times as a table cloth. The paper is of good quality. One officer we had seemed to prefer the Daily Telegraph, but he got badly wounded and so prevented the recurrence of many arguments.
"You can have no idea what that little notice meant to me. It was the dawn of hope. A lady, young, desired to correspond with me; yes, with me. No longer should I stand alone and isolated during the happiest five minutes of the day, when the mail bag arrived from dear old England. No longer should I enjoy the sweets and candy purchased by another man's loved one. No longer should I be compelled to borrow and wear the socks, sweaters, mufflers, and mittens knitted by hands uninterested in me. All would soon be changed. Oh, the joy of it!
"Dear friend, I hope that soon I shall receive a photograph of your charming self so that my dugout may become a paradise. I intend to write regularly to you and I expect you to prove likewise constant.
"When the sun starts to sink from my sight,
When the birds start to roost 'neath the eaves,
There's one thing that's to me a delight—
The mail bag from Blighty.
"Already, you will see, I am breaking into verse, but when I receive your photograph I may even write a sonnet. And now I will close my letter and retire to my dugout buoyed up with hope and confidence.
"Yours very sincerely,
"Hector Clarke-Stuart."
The major seemed to like the letter and we agreed that it ought to produce results. None of us dared to acknowledge our ignorance in regard to the famous picture he had described. Our major was a fashionable person who went to the opera always and had even been known to attend the Royal Academy.
At this moment I had an inspiration and confided it to Wharton. We both knew the major's wife well. Among many charms she possessed a sparkling sense of humour, both active and passive. I correspond with her regularly. I wrote a long letter upon this evening.
The next day the major took Taunton and a couple of guns to a position several miles away to prepare for the battle of Loos, so he was not at the battery when two letters arrived addressed to Lieutenant Clarke-Stuart, Wharton and I therefore retired to a dugout with the two letters and steamed them open. One was from a very respectable English miss who lived in a south coast town. She described her daily life with some detail and the view from her bedroom window "across the bay," but when she remarked that she and her brothers had always "kept themselves to themselves," thereby showing consideration for others but a mean spirit, we decided to kill her for the time being. Wharton, very respectable, and a typical Englishman, had certain doubts but we carried on.