TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

with the hounds and succeeded in being authentically
jolly. I can remember one good hunt along the vale
below the downs. I hadn't felt so happy since I didn't
know when, I thought; which merely meant that
while galloping and jumping on a good horse every-
thing else was forgotten—for forty-five minutes of the
best, anyhow. And there was no sense in feeling mor-
bid about the dead; they were well out of the war,
anyway; and they wouldn't grudge me my one good
day in the vale.

After that there was London with its good dinners
and an air-raid and seeing a few friends and going
to a few theatres, and before I knew where I was,
Clitherland Camp had claimed me for its own again.
I was feeling much more cheerful, and I told myself
that I intended to lead a life of light-hearted stupidity.
At Slateford I had been an individual isolated from
outside influences, with plenty of time for thinking
things over and finding out who I was. Now I was
back in the brain-fuddling existence which did its best
to prevent my thinking at all. I had to knock out my
pipe and go on parade. My time was no longer my
own. My military duties, however, were more a mat-
ter of killing time than of using it, and we were all
merely waiting to move across to Ireland. So for
about three weeks after I came back from leave I
was in much the same position as the man in the
comic song:

Fd got lots of time to do it; but there wasrft much to do
When I was made head-keeper—of the pheasants at the

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