Doggie looked about him helplessly, while the comforter smiled grimly. Already his disconsolate attitude towards the dingy hutments of the camp and the layer of thick mud on his beautiful new boots had diverted his companion.
“Couldn’t I have this furnished at my own expense? A carpet and a proper bed, and a few pictures——”
“I wouldn’t try.”
“Why not?”
“Some of it might get broken—not quite accidentally.”
“But surely,” gasped Doggie, “the soldiers would not be allowed to come in here and touch my furniture?”
“It seems,” said the subaltern, after a bewildered stare, “that you have quite a lot to learn.”
Doggie had. The subaltern reported a new kind of animal to the mess. The mess saw to it that Doggie should be crammed with information—but information wholly incorrect and misleading, which added to his many difficulties. When his ton of kit arrived he held an unwilling reception in the hut and found himself obliged to explain to gravely curious men the use for which the various articles were designed.
“This, I suppose, is a new type of gas-mask?”
No. It was a patent cooker. Doggie politely showed how it worked. He also demonstrated that a sleeping-bag was not a kit-sack of a size unauthorized by the regulations, and that a huge steel-pointed walking-stick had nothing to do with agriculture.