[XX
HOME AGAIN!]
That same day, in the evening, I was tendered a banquet at the Hotel Savoy by a fellow-officer who had bet three other friends of mine that I would be home by Christmas. This wager had been made at the time he heard that I was a prisoner of war, and the dinner was the stake.
The first intimation he had of my safe return from Germany and the fact that he had won his bet was a telegram I sent him reading as follows:
Lieutenant Louis Grant:
War-bread bad, so I came home.
Pat.
He said he would not part with that message for a thousand dollars.
Other banquets followed in fast succession. After I had survived nine of them I figured that I was now in as much danger of succumbing to a surfeit of rich food as I had previously been of dying from starvation, and for my own protection I decided to leave London. Moreover, my thoughts and my heart were turning back to the land of my birth, where I knew there was a loving old mother who was longing for more substantial evidence of my safe escape than the cables and letters she had received.
Strangely enough, on the boat which carried me across the Atlantic I saw an R. F. C. man—Lieutenant Lascelles.
I walked over to him, held out my hand, and said, "Hello!"