‘’ow do you like it?’ inquired Sergeant Tozer.

‘Oh, it’s cushy enough,’ Bourne answered indifferently. ‘I don’t mind it for a week or so; but it is not a job I want for keeps. I would rather be with the company.’

‘Some people don’t know their bloody luck,’ said the sergeant tersely.

‘I don’t know. Your section were always fairly contented, except when Fritz strafed them unnecessarily.’

‘Sergeant-Major Robinson wanted to know whether you would pinch ’im some notebooks from the orderly-room, an’ a few pencils? ’e an’ the quarter-bloke can’t get anything out o’ them buggers.’

‘I’ll pinch anything the sergeant-major wants,’ said Bourne recklessly; ‘only he will have to give me time to learn my way about.’

He went back to the orderly-room, and was released from his arduous labours a little after half-past five; then, picking up Shem and Martlow, he went off to an estaminet, determined to have as bon a time as the place and their purses afforded. The battalion had been paid out at twelve o’clock, and the place was crowded with uproarious men, stamping time with their feet on the floor as they sang at the top of their voices:

‘Mademoiselle, she bought a cow, Parley-voo,

To milk the brute, she didn’t know how, Parley-voo,

She pulled the tail instead of the tit,

And covered herself all over with – MILK. …’

A storm of loud cheers and laughter at this unwonted delicacy of phrase drowned the concluding gibberish of the chorus. Bourne ordered a bottle of some poison concocted out of apples and potatoes labelled champagne, which had a little more kick in it than the vin rouge or French beer. Then the three of them crowded in among the men playing ‘crown and anchor’, with Snobby Hines rattling the dice-box.

‘’oo’s goin’ to ’ave somethin’ on the old mud-’ook? Come on, me lucky lads, if yer don’t speckyerlate yer can’t accumyerlate. Somethin’ on the ol’ mud-’ook jest to try yer luck. Y’all finished, then? Right! There y’are. It’s the sergeant-major. I tol’ yer so. An’ off we go again, an’ off we go again.’

Bourne struck a vein of luck, and as he had crushed in next to Thompson, the storekeeper, he gave him ten francs for services rendered at Sandpits. He lost that in a few minutes, and Bourne gave him another ten, which went the same way. As Bourne’s generosity seemed to dry up, Thompson asked him for the loan of five, and that vanished with an equal rapidity. Shem won a little, and Martlow lost, but lost cannily, buttoning up his purse when he found the dice running against him. But Bourne had a bit more than his share of luck, and as the disconsolate Thompson still hung about the altars of fortune, on which he had sacrificed already more than double his pay, Bourne gave him five francs, and told him to go and try his luck with wine or women, as he might do better at another game. Thompson took his advice, and turned away disillusioned from an unsympathetic world; and then, oddly enough, for a little while Bourne lost; but he played on, and his luck turned again. He got up having won about seventy-five francs, and they had another bottle of champagne before setting off through the darkness to their billets.