The Sunny Side by A.A. Milne Page A

different.”
    And so there you have the second reason. If the Bombing Officer rode Toby, I should shave again to-morrow, and then where would the Battalion be? Ruined.
    So Toby and I go off together. Up till now he has been good to me. He has bitten one Company Commander, removed another, and led the Colonel a three-mile chase across country after him, so if any misunderstanding occurs between us there will be good precedent for it. So far my only real trouble has been once when billeting.
    Billeting is delightful fun. You start three hours in advance of the battalion, which means that if the battalion leaves at eight in the morning, you are up in the fresh of the day, when the birds are singing. You arrive at the village and get from the Mayor or the Town Major a list of possible hostesses. Entering the first house (labelled “Officers 5”) you say, “ Vous avez un lit pour un Officier ici, n’est-ce pas? Vive la France !” She answers, “ Pas un lit ,” and you go to the next house. “ Vous avez place pour cent hommes—oui?” “Non ,” says she—and so on. By-andby the battalion arrives, and everybody surroundsyou. “Where are my men going?” “Where is my billet?” “Where’s ‘C’ Company’s mess?” “Have you found anything for the Pioneers?” And so one knows what it is to be popular.
    Well, the other day the Major thought he’d come with me, just to give me an idea how it ought to be done. I say nothing of the result; but for reasons connected with Toby I hope he won’t come again. For in the middle of a narrow street crowded with lorries, he jumped off his horse, flung (I think that’s the expression)—flung me the reins and said, “Just wait here while I see the Mayor a moment.”
    The Major’s horse I can describe quite shortly—a nasty big black horse.
    Toby I have already described as a nice horse, but he had been knee-deep in mud, inspecting huts, for nearly half an hour, and was sick of billeting.
    I need not describe two-hundred-lorries-on-a-dark-evening to you.
    And so, seeing that you know the constituents, I must let you imagine how they all mixed…
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    This is a beastly war. But it has its times; and when our own particular bit of the battle is over,and what is left of the battalion is marching back to rest, I doubt if, even in England (which seems very far off), you will find two people more contented with the morning than Toby and I, as we jog along together.

    Common
    Seated in your comfortable club, my very dear sir, or in your delightful drawing-room, madam, you may smile pityingly at the idea of a mascot saving anybody’s life. “What will be, will be,” you say to yourself (or in Italian to your friends), “and to suppose that a charm round the neck of a soldier will divert a German shell is ridiculous.” But out there, through the crumps, things look otherwise.
    Common had sat on the mantelpiece at home. An ugly little ginger dog, with a bit of red tape for his tongue and two black beads for his eyes, he viewed his limited world with an air of innocent impertinence very attractive to visitors. Common he looked and Common he was called, with a Christian name of Howard for registration. For six months he sat there, and no doubt he thought that he had seen all that there was to see of the world when the summons came which was to give him so different an outlook on life.
    For that summons meant the breaking up of his home. Master was going wandering from trench to trench, Mistress from one person’s house to another person’s house. She no doubt would take Common with her; or perhaps she couldn’t be bothered with an ugly little ginger dog, and he would be stored in some repository, boarded out in some Olympic kennel. “Or do you possibly think Master might—”
    He looked very wistful that last morning, so wistful that