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 			<p>Colonel Gillum said:</p>
 			<p>“That’s your brother, Mark⁠ ⁠…” And indeed the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Transport was Tietjens’ brother Mark, known as the Indispensable Official. Tietjens felt a real instant of dismay. He considered that his violent protest against the job would appear rather a smack in the face for poor old wooden-featured Mark who had probably taken a good deal of trouble to get him the job. Even if Mark should never hear of it, a man should not slap his brother in the face! Moreover, when he came to think of his last day in London, he remembered that Valentine Wannop, who had exaggerated ideas as to the safety of First Line Transport, had begged Mark to get him a job as divisional officer⁠ ⁠… And he imagined Valentine’s despair if she heard that he⁠—Tietjens⁠—had moved heaven and earth to get out of it. He saw her lower lip quivering and the tears in her eyes⁠ ⁠… But he probably had got that from some novel, because he had never seen her lower lip quiver. He had seen tears in her eyes!</p>
 			<p>He hurried back to his lines to take his orderly room. In the long hut McKechnie was taking that miniature court of drunks and defaulters for him and, just as Tietjens reached it, he was taking the case of Girtin and two other Canadian privates⁠ ⁠… The case of Girtin interested him, and when McKechnie slid out of his seat Tietjens occupied it. The prisoners were only just being marched in by a Sergeant Davis, an admirable <abbr epub:type="z3998:initialism">N.C.O.</abbr> whose rifle appeared to be part of his rigid body and who executed an amazing number of stamps in seriously turning in front of the <abbr epub:type="z3998:initialism">C.O.</abbr>’s table. It gave the impression of an Indian war dance⁠ ⁠…</p>
-			<p>Tietjens glanced at the charge sheet, which was marked as coming from the Provost-Marshal’s Office. Instead of the charge of absence from draft he read that of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline in that⁠ ⁠… The charge was written in a very illiterate hand; an immense beery lance-corporal of Garrison Military Police, with a red hatband, attended to give evidence⁠ ⁠… It was a tenuous and disagreeable affair. Girtin had not gone absent, so Tietjens had to revise his views of the respectable. At any rate of the respectable Colonial private soldier with mother complete. For there really had been a mother, and Girtin had been seeing her into the last tram down into the town. A frail old lady. Apparently, trying to annoy the Canadian, the beery lance-corporal of the Garrison Military Police had hustled the mother. Girtin had remonstrated; very moderately, he said. The lance-corporal had shouted at him. Two other Canadians returning to camp had intervened and two more police. The police had called the Canadians ⸻ conscripts, which was almost more than the Canadians could stand, they being voluntarily enlisted 1914 or 1915 men. The police⁠—it was an old trick⁠—had kept the men talking until two minutes after the last post had sounded and then had run them in for being absent off pass⁠—and for disrespect to their red hatbands.</p>
+			<p>Tietjens glanced at the charge sheet, which was marked as coming from the Provost-Marshal’s Office. Instead of the charge of absence from draft he read that of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline in that⁠ ⁠… The charge was written in a very illiterate hand; an immense beery lance-corporal of Garrison Military Police, with a red hatband, attended to give evidence⁠ ⁠… It was a tenuous and disagreeable affair. Girtin had not gone absent, so Tietjens had to revise his views of the respectable. At any rate of the respectable Colonial private soldier with mother complete. For there really had been a mother, and Girtin had been seeing her into the last tram down into the town. A frail old lady. Apparently, trying to annoy the Canadian, the beery lance-corporal of the Garrison Military Police had hustled the mother. Girtin had remonstrated; very moderately, he said. The lance-corporal had shouted at him. Two other Canadians returning to camp had intervened and two more police. The police had called the Canadians ⸻ conscripts, which was almost more than the Canadians could stand, they being voluntarily enlisted 1914 or 1915 men. The police⁠—it was an old trick⁠—had kept the men talking until two minutes after the last post had sounded and then had run them in for being absent off pass⁠—and for disrespect to their red hatbands.</p>
 			<p>Tietjens, with a carefully measured fury, first cross-examined and then damned the police witness to hell. Then he marked the charge sheets with the words, “Case explained,” and told the Canadians to go and get ready for his parade. It meant he was in for a frightful row with the provost-marshal, who was a port-winey old general called O’Hara and loved his police as if they had been ewe-lambs.</p>
 			<p>He took his parade, the Canadian troops looking like real soldiers in the sunlight, went round his lines with the new Canadian sergeant-major, who had his appointment, thank goodness, from his own authorities; wrote a report on the extreme undesirability of lecturing his men on the causes of the war, since his men were either graduates of one or other Canadian university and thus knew twice as much about the causes of the war as any lecturer the civilian authorities could provide, or else they were half-breed Micamuc Indians, Eskimo, Japanese, or Alaskan Russians, none of whom could understand any English lecturer⁠ ⁠… He was aware that he would have to rewrite his report so as to make it more respectful to the newspaper proprietor peer who, at that time, was urging on the home Government the necessity of lecturing all the subjects of His Majesty on the causes of the war. But he wanted to get that grouse off his chest and its disrespect would pain Levin, who would have to deal with these reports if he did not get married first. Then he lunched off army sausage-meat and potatoes, mashed with their skins complete, watered with an admirable 1906 brut champagne which they bought themselves, and an appalling Canadian cheese⁠—at the headquarters table to which the colonel had invited all the subalterns who that day were going up the line for the first time. They had some <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">h</i>’s in their compositions, but in revenge they must have boasted of a pint of adenoid growths between them. There was, however, a charming young half-caste Goa second-lieutenant, who afterwards proved of an heroic bravery. He gave Tietjens a lot of amusing information as to the working of the purdah in Portuguese India.</p>
 			<p>So, at half-past one Tietjens sat on Schomburg, the coffin-headed, bright chestnut from the Prussian horse-raising establishment near Celle. Almost a pure thoroughbred, this animal had usually the paces of a dining-room table, its legs being fully as stiff. But today its legs might have been made of cotton-wool, it lumbered over frosty ground breathing stertorously and, at the jumping ground of the Deccan Horse, a mile above and behind Rouen, it did not so much refuse a very moderate jump as come together in a lugubrious crumple. It was, in the light of a red, jocular sun, like being mounted on a brokenhearted camel. In addition, the fatigues of the morning beginning to tell, Tietjens was troubled by an obsession of O Nine Morgan which he found tiresome to have to stall off.</p>