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Rh of the corps rose up to meet her, piloted her to a place between three other uniforms, and there began a very merry little meal.

'I give it up,' I said. 'This is guilty splendour that I don't understand.'

'Quite simple,' said Burgard across the table. 'The barrack supplies breakfast, dinner, and tea on the Army scale to the Imperial Guard (which we call I.G.) when it's in barracks as well as to the Line and Militia. They can all invite their friends if they choose to pay for them. That's where we make our profits. Look!'

Near one of the doors were four or five tables crowded with workmen in the raiment of their callings. They ate steadily, but found time to jest with the uniforms about them; and when one o'clock clanged from a big half-built block of flats across the street, filed out.

'Those,' Devine explained, 'are either our Line or Militia men, as such entitled to the regulation whack at regulation cost. It's cheaper than they could buy it; an' they meet their friends too. A man'll walk a mile in his dinner hour to mess with his own lot.'

'Wait a minute,' I pleaded. 'Will you tell me what those plumbers and plasterers and brick-layers that I saw go out just now have to do with what I was taught to call the Line?'

'Tell him,' said the Boy over his shoulder to Burgard. He was busy talking with the large Verschoyle, my old schoolmate.

'The Line comes next to the Guard. The Linesman's generally a town-bird who can't afford