Nevertheless, Patricia enjoyed those weeks at Brighton, the surreptitious rides on government horses provided by Torrington, the occasional visits to “morning stables,” the talks with Alice, the convivial tea-parties at her own flat.

One by one, she grew acquainted with most of Peter’s brother officers; with Lodden, always irascible, querulous, good-natured but utterly lacking in self-control; with the semi-invalid but still bloodthirsty Torrington; with “Brat” Archdale and horsy Hutchinson; with the ever-twinkling Pettigrew and his particular pal Conway, a riotous black-haired six-foot fellow from the Federated Malay States who used to say, “Believe me, Mrs. P.J., we’ll make that husband of yours see life before we’ve done with him.”

Good days! and even when the Brigade moved out to Shoreham, the good days continued. Patricia used to motor over in the Crossley, sometimes with Alice (who stayed on alone in Brighton), or the children, sometimes by herself. Gunner Horne and his unclean brother cooks knew her; would bow to her judgment on such abstruse points as the using-up of soup-bones in the big copper of the Officers’ Mess Hut. (For the hutments had been built at last: Shoreham Camp was a by-word no longer.) Mr. Black, the keen little wax-moustached Regimental Sergeant Major, knew her too; and Sergeant Murgatroyd, the enormous Rough Rider with the worsted spur on his arm; and Bombardier Pink, a trusty grizzled old Yorkshireman, who supervised the fodder as if it were pure gold.

By now, nearly half the horses had been decanted, protesting vigorously, at Shoreham Siding; were picketed out in long lines on the flat ground below the hutments: and Patricia grew to love those sounds no horse-soldier ever forgets—the whickering and the whinnying which follows the command “Feed,” the tossing of head-collars and stamp of hooves on turf as nose-bag slings are slid over laid-back ears; the deep snuffle of nostrils as muzzles plunge to corn.

Good days indeed! For already the formless mob which Stark had led out from billets in Brighton took shape under his hand. Harness began to arrive, and water-carts, and dark-green limbered wagons that stood ranged orderly in the still gunless gun-park. The Ammunition Column, that sink whereto all batteries sent their least efficient, had been formed; and a sleepy regular Major named Billy Williams, with moustaches like Harry Tate and an astounding capacity for bottled Bass, put in charge of it. Lodden, alternately bullying and apologizing to his subalterns—Brat Archdale and a wild young Irishman called O’Grady—commanded “A” Battery: Torrington, V.C. with Pettigrew and Straker adoring at his heels, “B”: Reggie Conway and the silent Merrilees, still lorded it over a captainless “C”: while “Don” Battery, usually known from its three juniors, Hutchinson, Hall and Halliday, as the “three H affair,” still awaited a master—by general prophecy, Bromley, then away on his gunnery-course at Larkhill.

Peter Jameson, master of men since boyhood, saw this new entity growing; began, in his pride of it, to forget civilian troubles. Stark, true to his words with Straker, had taken P.J. into the Orderly Room—not yet as Adjutant but only on probation.

To Conway or Pettigrew, outdoor fellows, the work would have been dull, desk-tying: but for one brought up in the City, the employment had its fascination. P.J. assisted by the meticulous R.G.A. clerk—Sergeant Barber—ran his Orderly Room as he would have run a business—filing-systems, card-indices, a diminutive stenographer (picked unwillingly from the Ammunition Column), type-writers.... And, the day’s work over, there was always Driver Jelks waiting with “Little Willie” (as Peter christened the frisky wicked-looking bay which Hutchinson had selected for him), and a long kicking scamper across the Downs, and Driver Garton, his red-cheeked yellow-haired Orderly, waiting with hot water for the rubber bath in the bare wooden cubicle which Peter, by right of his position on “H.Q.,” occupied alone.

One by one, other officers joined them: Percy Rorke, a pert lad, fresh from school, christened by common accord, “Monkeyface”: a jovial Irish doctor, Ted Carson by name: a few undistinguished subalterns whom Stark sent to plague Billy Williams in the Ammunition Column.

Purves, as Orderly Officer to the Colonel, began to pick his Headquarters Staff of Signallers: Corporal Waller (“Lewis” Waller of course), who had been a telephonist in private life; Gunners Seabright and Pirbright (bosom friends, constantly scrapping, known by their intimates as “the Poluskis”), Driver Nicholson (a wireless operator by profession) and the rest.

So May warmed towards June, and the remarkable days slid by. The Brigade grew—not even Stark realized exactly how—towards efficiency. If only they could get one—just one—real 18-pounder gun! But that was denied them; so volunteer parties of officers and men would take wagon on Saturday afternoons to Preston Barracks at Brighton, and there pay limber-gunners good half-crowns for the privilege of half-an-hour’s peering through real dial-sights, half-an-hour’s clicking at “practice” breech-blocks.

They took their work in deadly earnest, these stubborn North Countrymen; studied their gun-drill pamphlets by themselves; were ill folk to discipline by such officers as they suspected deficient in knowledge.

But even Stark’s most ruby language, they accepted with a smile. He knew his job!