In spite of these conveniences our fortress is past its prime and a modern burglar would treat it as a joke. It is so weak in its joints that when the wind blows it shakes like a jelly, and we have to shave with safety-razors.
In a small villa opposite lives Freddy, our married subaltern, and Mrs. Freddy.
On a patch of turf up a neighbouring lane Oswald and Co. took up their residence this summer.
The troopers called him Oswald for some unknown reason, but I doubt if that was his baptismal name, and I doubt if he was ever baptized.
Oswald was a tall bony grizzled child of the Open.
Years ago he would have been dismissed briefly as a tramp, but we know better now; we have read our Georgian poets and we know that such folk do not perambulate the country stealing fowls and firing ricks from any dislike of settled labour, but because they have heard the call of far horizons, belles étoiles and great spaces.
The Co. consisted of a woolly donkey which carried Oswald's portmanteau when he trekked, and a hairy dog which provided him with company and conversation.
The donkey browsed, unfettered, about the roadside, taking the weather as it came; but Oswald and the dog, degenerates, sheltered under a wigwam of saplings and old sacks.
The wigwam being four feet long and Oswald six, he had to telescope like a tortoise to get fully under cover; sometimes he forgot his feet and left them outside all night in the dew, but, as he had no boots to spoil, this didn't matter much.
Not having any business to attend to he lay abed very late. Our troopers, riding at ease en route to the drill grounds, would toss their lighted cigarette-ends at the protruding bare feet. A grizzled head telescoping out of the other end of the wigwam and a husky voice calling down celestial fury upon them, would signalise a hit.