I.
"Alongside, a fool was obstinately trying to pull more circulars off
a jellygraph than it would print, doing his damnedest to produce a
lot of ghosts that you could hardly read. Others were talking:
'Where are the Parisian fasteners?' asked a toff. And they don't
call things by their proper names: 'Tell me now, if you please, what
are the elements quartered at X--?' The elements! What's all that
sort of babble?" asked Volpatte.
"At the end of the big table where these fellows were that I've
mentioned and that I'd been to, and the sergeant floundering about
behind a hillock of papers at the top of it and giving orders, a
simpleton was doing nothing but tap on his blotting-pad with his
hands. His job, the mug, was the department of leave-papers, and as
the big push had begun and all leave was stopped, he hadn't anything
to do--'Capital!' he says.
"And all that, that's one table in one room in one department in one
depot. I've seen more, and then more, and more and more again. I
don't know, but it's enough to drive you off your nut, I tell you."
"Have they got brisques?" [note 2]
"Not many there, but in the department of the second line every one
had 'em. You had museums of 'em there--whole Zoological Gardens of
stripes."
"Prettiest thing I've seen in the way of stripes," said Tulacque,
"was a motorist, dressed in cloth that you'd have said was satin,
with new stripes, and the leathers of an English officer, though a
second-class soldier as he was.
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