Part 11 (2/2)

He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. ”That's from Jackson minor,” he said. ”Cheek, isn't it?”

I began reading the letter aloud.

DEAR OLD PAN--You must be having a ripping time. I see your letter is headed ”The Front” ...

I looked at Peter. He was blus.h.i.+ng uncomfortably.

... so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole school's fritefully bucked up about you, and we're one up on Fenner's....

”What's Fenner's?” I said to Peter.

”Oh, that's another school at Beckenham. They're stinkers. Put on no end of side because some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham last term.

But we beat them at footer.”

We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, ”Rot!” So I showed him the envelope of your letter with ”Pa.s.sed by the Censor”

on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said, ”That's proof,” and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you'll get the V.C. or something--the Head'll be sure to give us a half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's newspaper when he leaves it lying about--you know how he sw.a.n.ks about it--said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was rot, and that it meant they'd given him a lot of other chaps to command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you can't bring it off, then come home with a medal or something.

”Peter,” I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky.

”Major Peter,” I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round.

He was very red.

”I didn't mean you to read all that rot,” he said. ”I meant what he says at the end.”

I read on--this time in silence:

I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod--we hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never saw one. We've given up German this term--beastly language; it's just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never know what he's driving at.

Then followed a sentence heavily underlined:

_By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on it, German blood I mean_.--Yours to a cinder,

ARTHUR JACKSON.

I handed this priceless missive back to Peter.

”Cheek, isn't it?” said Peter rather hurriedly. ”His old knife for a bayonet!”

”But if you put 'the Front' at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you can't be surprised at his asking for one, you know.”

Peter blushed.

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