veteran out of his pocket, and peered into its noisome bowl.
"Not indoors, man, for heaven's sake!" The Doctor backed hurriedly out of the room. "The last billet you cleaned your pipe in they complained to the Mayor of the village."
"Go away, Doctor, go away. Go and put chloride of lime round the cook-house," Mac was shouting through the window at the receding medico. "And ask yon woman if she has a hairpin. My pipe. …" But the Doctor was out of sight.
Ten minutes later the room was empty save for a batman clearing the breakfast table.
•••••
Now as a general rule the Sappers do not live in the trenches, but go up there each day and most nights, the remainder of the time being spent in dwellings of dubious sanitation and indubitable draughtiness a mile or so in rear. To each company a certain front is allotted, and it is their joy and pride to maintain this front and the network of trenches behind it spotless and untarnished, what time they minister ceaselessly to the lightest whim of its heroic defenders—usually known by the generic term of P.B.I., or poor bally Infantry. Which, of course, is not what really happens, but one likes to think thus beautifully.
In addition to the Infantry, other people thrust themselves forward in a manner which requires firmness and tact to deal with: gunners require O.P.'s, or observation posts; other gunners require
