class="i16">O.S.

THE RUMOURISTS.

FIRST ASS. "AND I HAVE IT ON THE BEST AUTHORITY."

SECOND ASS. "INCREDIBLE!"           [Goes off and repeats it.]

THE MUD LARKS.

THE French are a great people; the more I see of them the more I admire them, and I have been seeing a lot of them lately.

I seem to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no intention of babbling these jargons; it is the fault of my tongue, which takes charge on these occasions, and seems to be under the impression that, when it is talking to a foreigner, any foreign language will do.

Atkins, I notice, also suffers from a form of the same delusion. When talking to a Frenchman, he employs a mangled cross between West Coast and China pidgin, and by placing a long E at the end of every word imagines he is making himself completely clear to the suffering Gaul. And the suffering Gaul listens to it all with incredible patience and courtesy, and, what is more, somehow or other disentangles a meaning, thereby proving himself the most intelligent creature on earth.

We have always prided ourselves that the teaching of modern languages in our island seminaries is unique; but such is not the case. Here and there in France, apparently, they teach English on the same lines. I discovered this, the other day, when we called on a French battery to have the local tactical situation explained to us. I was pushed forward as the star linguist of our party; the French produced a smiling Captain as theirs. The non-combatants of both sides then sat back and waited for their champions to begin. I felt a trifle nervous myself, and the Frenchman didn't seem too happy. We filled in a few minutes bowing, saluting, kissing and shaking hands, and then let Babel loose, I in my fourth-form French, and he, to my amazement, in equally elementary English. The affair looked hopeless from the start; if either of us would have consented to talk in his own language, the other might have understood him, but neither of us could, before that audience, with our reputations at stake.

Towards lunch-time things grew really desperate; we had got as far as "the pen of my female cousin," but the local tactical situation remained as foggy as ever, our backers were showing signs of impatience, and we were both lathering freely. Then by some happy chance we discovered we had both been in Africa, fell crowing into each other's arms, and the local tactical situation was cleared "one time" in flowing Swahili. Our respective reputations as linguists are now beyond doubt.

We became fast friends, this Captain and I. He bore me off to his cellar, stood me the usual six-course feed (with wines), and after it was over asked how I would like to while away the afternoon. I left it in his hands. "Eh bien, let us play on the Bosch a little," he suggested. It sounded as pleasant a light after-dinner amusement as any, so I bowed and we sallied forth.

He led me to his observation post, spoke down a telephone, and about twenty yards of Hun parapet were not. "That will spoil his siesta," said my Captain. "By the way, his Headquarters is behind that ruined farm,"

"Which?" I inquired; there were several farms about, none of them in any great state of repair.

"I will show you—watch," he replied, talked into the 'phone again, and far away a cloud, a cloud of brick dust, smoked aloft. "Voilà!"

He thereupon pointed out all the objects of local interest in the same fashion.

"We will now give him fifty rounds for luck, and then we will return to my cellar for a cup of coffee," said he, and a further twenty yards of Hun parapet were removed.

Suddenly there came an answering salvo from Hunland, and a flock of shells whizzed over our heads.

"Tiens!" my Captain exclaimed. "He has lost his little temper, has he? Naughty, naughty! I must give him a slap. A hundred rounds!" he shouted into the 'phone, and the German lines spouted like a school of whales blowing.

Again the Bosch slammed across a heavy reply. My Captain leapt to his 'phone. "He would answer me back, would he? The impudence! Give him a thousand rounds, my children!"

Then for the next hour or so the sky was filled with a screaming tornado of shells, rushing, bumping, and bursting, and the Bosch lines sagged, bulged, quivered, slopped over, and were spattered against the blue in small smithereens.

"And now let us see what he says to that," said my Captain pleasantly. We waited, we watched, we listened; but there came no reply (possibly because there was no one left to make one), and my Captain turned to me, shoulders shrugged, palms outspread, a grimace of apologetic disgust on his mobile face—like a circus-master explaining that his clown has got the measles: "Nottin, see you? Pas d'esprit, l'animal!"

Certainly Hans the Hun does not seem to be enjoying the same high spirits he did of yore. Possibly he is beginning to regret the day he left the old beer garden, his ample Gretchen, and the fatty foods his figure demands. The story of Patrick and Goldilocks would tend to prove as much.

The other day Patrick was engaged in one of those little "gains" which straighten out the unsightly kinks in the "line" and give the War-correspondents a chance to get their names in print.

Patrick and his friends attacked in a snowstorm, dropped into a German post, gave the occupants every assistance in evacuating, and prepared to make themselves at home. While they were clearing up the mess, they found they had taken a prisoner, a blond Bavarian hero who had found it impossible to leave with his friends on account of half-a-ton of sandbags on his chest. They excavated him, told him if he was a good boy they'd give him a ticket to Donington Hall at nightfall, christened him Goldilocks for the time being, and threw him some rations, among which was a tin of butter.

He listened to all they had to say in a dazed sulky fashion, but at the sight of the tin of butter he gurgled drunkenly and seemed to go light-headed. He spent a perfect day revelling in the joys of anticipation, crooning over that butter, cuddling it, hiding it in one pocket after the other. Towards dusk down came the snow again, and under cover thereof the Bosch counter-attacked.

Patrick says he suddenly heard the bull voice of a Hun officer hic-coughing gutturals, and they were on him. He had no time to send up an S.O.S. rocket, and his machine-gun jammed. In a minute they were all mixed up, at it tooth and claw as merry as a Galway election, the big Bosch officer, throwing off a hymn of hate, the life and soul of the party. He came for Patrick with an automatic, and Patrick thought all was up; and so it would have been but for Goldilocks, who materialized suddenly out of nowhere, deftly tripped up his officer from behind, and, dancing on his stomach with inspired hooves, trod him out of sight.

Their moving spirit being wiped out, the Huns lost whatever heart they had had, and went through their "Kamerad" exercise without further ado.

When the excitement was over Patrick sought out Goldilocks, and, shaking him warmly by the hand, thanked him for suppressing the officer and saving the situation.

"Situation be damned" (or words to that effect), Goldilocks retorted. "He would have pinched my butter!"