"I'm not talking to people; I'm talking to you. There's nothing said in your letter, is there, about Walter having been asked by Sir Douglas Haig to draw up a plan for the Big Push?"
"No, there isn't; but Walter would draw up a dozen if he were asked. He's that sort."
"Don't talk about my first cousin once removed in that flippant way."
"I'm not."
"You are, and it's most ungrateful of you."
"Ungrateful?"
"Yes, ungrateful. He's written you a letter that you'll be able to chat about for a fortnight. I can hear you mentioning it to your train-friends, Major Boger and Dr. Apthorpe. You'll bring it in in a careless kind of way. 'I've had a letter,' you'll say, 'from a chap at the Front, a cousin of my wife's, and he tells me they're expecting a move now at any moment.' Then they'll both say, 'Ah,' as if they didn't think much of your chap, and each of them will produce a chap of his own with some highly private information about the Crown Prince having been taken to a lunatic asylum in a motor-car so heavily iron-clad that nobody could see who was inside, but he was recognised by his shrieks; and Dr. Apthorpe will cap it all with some cock-and-bull story about German ships having bombarded one another in the Canal last week. And so you'll get to London."
"Francesca," I said, "you are a holy terror. How do you know all these things? You have never travelled to London with Major Boger and Dr. Apthorpe, and yet you're able to misrepresent them as if you'd heard them speak every day of your life. It's wonderful."
"Clever fellow," said Francesca; "we won't pursue the question of your boastings. They're innocent enough, I dare say. Let me hear what Walter actually does say in his letter."
"Well," I said, "he doesn't actually say very much. The weather is fine, he says, and his particular lot have been having rather a slack time lately. There was a stampede of horses last week, but his Battery was not involved in it, and would I mind sending him a packet or two of chocolate, some strong brown boot-laces and a briar-root pipe, he having broken his last one, and he's never felt fitter in his life, and anybody who wants to know what health is had better come out to France at once. That's about all; but you can read it for yourself." I handed it over to her and she skimmed through it.