THE SCRAPPER SCRAPPED.
THE WATCH DOGS.
LXIII.
My dear Charles,—I never meant to give myself away; I meant to go on talking about the old War till the end, just as if I was taking a leading part in it, so that you should have still believed I was doing the bull-dog business with the best of them. But no, let me be honest and tell you that I have practically ceased to be a dog. The only painful connection I can boast of recently with the War is that, having cause to travel from place to place in this country, I was unhappy enough to strike six meatless days in succession, which gave me to think that even embusquing in France has its drawbacks. On the seventh day I was accused, by good people who know not Thomas, of being (1) a Russian, (2) an American, (3) a Belgian, and (4) an Irishman, which made me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet. And I've got a nasty cold, and nobody loves me or cleans my buttons, and if I want to go anywhere there are no more motor cars and they make me pay a penny for the tram, and my wife doesn't think I'm a hero any longer, and little James is being taught to blush and look away and start another subject when anybody says "Dad-dad," and (if you can believe this) I've just been made to pay a franc-and-a-half for a tin of bully beef.