To-day, for the first time since I have been here, I had visitors. Those at home, eager to get a glimpse of their soldier-boy in his native haunts, came down to see things as they are. I’m quite certain that the general arrangement of the barracks, with its cluttered appearance suggested by many pairs of shoes standing around and many hats and coats and old sweaters hanging about, did not accord with mother’s ideas of good housekeeping. And she assured me that many of the old rose, pink and baby blue comforters would not have suffered from a washing, all of which I had never noticed before, until she drew my attention to it. She intimated, too, that my dish towel and my hand towel would never testify as to my respectable up-bringing, and she felt that I should make a practice of taking off those abominably heavy trench shoes in the evening and putting on a pair of slippers which she would send down to me. She thought that a bath-robe might come in handy for lounging in the evening and perhaps after we got comfortably settled in our Southern quarters, she might send one of the big, roomy library chairs down to me, for she did not approve of one’s sitting on one’s bed the way most of us did. She deplored the total lack of chairs about the barracks and she was quite sure that taking an ice cold shower out in that horrible big tin building would certainly result in innumerable cases of influenza, if nothing more serious. She’s a dear old mother and I don’t know that I have ever appreciated her so much as I have since I’ve been down here.

Then with my visitors caring for themselves for a while, and mother chumming up with the always affable Fat, whom she took quite a fancy to, I hurried about my work of being re-outfitted with summer uniforms. Fortunately they allowed me to retain my overcoat (which I received but a few days ago) until we are ready to entrain.

Then came the passes. The officer was successful and we who are to go South are given a release from duty until to-morrow night at retreat. Other passes were distributed, too, and Fat fortunate for once, yet unfortunate, got one to go home until Monday morning. But poor Fat! Still the military tailors lag and now that he has the pass that he has been trying to get for this last month, he cannot use it, for he is not properly uniformed to leave the cantonment, having still just his flannel shirt. He tried frantically to borrow parts of a uniform to fit him and while he could find a pair of breeches that he could get into, a jacket was lacking, so in disgust, and with a most unhappy smile, he gave it up and went over to the Y.M. telephone booth to ask his mother to come down and visit him over Sunday.

And to-night there are no taps for me, for I am home once more and writing this at my own desk. We all came home together and had a bully trip and now, after the best dinner I have eaten in many a day, I shall see a real show at a real theatre, and sit up as late as I choose and when I go to bed I will be between clean sheets again and there will be no officers’ whistles to wake me in the morning.