"That's lucky," he said; "I shall be able to give you a lift in a taxi as far as Kennington."
In vain I expostulated with him, and urged that I was route-marching, not route-cabbing. But he wouldn't listen.
"Anyhow," he concluded, "it's most dangerous to march just after a crumpet tea. Haven't you read your 'Infantry Training'?"
The upshot of the matter was that we taxied to Kennington, where at last I managed to leave him. And then I began to feel tired. True, I hadn't done any marching, but it was none the less true that I felt as tired as if I had. However, I succeeded in struggling on for about fifty yards (to the tune of Handel's Largo), and then I boarded a tram. It had only proceeded a quarter-of-a-mile or so when the current failed and we all had to get out. I waited half-an-hour for a fresh batch of current to arrive, but none came, and I realised that my best course would be to walk to Brixton Station and procure a cab.
Accordingly, to the melody of "I don't expect to do it again for months and months and months," I put my best foot foremost. It was a moot point which of my two feet merited this distinction; they both felt deplorably senile. Then it began to rain—no mere niggardly sprinkling, but a lavish week-end cataclysm. I reached the station in the condition known to chemists as a saturated solution, only to find that there was not a cab on the rank. I was therefore compelled to adopt the only means of transport left to me—to route-march home....
I ultimately staggered in at my gate at an advanced hour of the evening to the strains of the opening bars of Tschaikowsky's Pathetic Symphony, whistled mentally. I was far beyond making the actual physical effort.
That night I wrote a postcard to Petherby. It ran as follows:—"Have just completed your course of treatment. Am cured."
