Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/155

Rh brood of children; and the grounds of his camp were his front yard and his fields. Immediately he boasted a little as the heads of thrifty households do. He reckoned pridefully what he expected to get for his crop of hay—much more than last year, so just that much more for the government, for even here efficiency was a deity. It expressed itself in the sight of his brood, working at their own trades, remaking shoes, converting jam and butter tins into pails and sprinklers and gasolene funnels, seeing that no smallest piece of rough material went wholly to waste.

He made us gasp at the sight of that extraordinary process of feeding the British soldier. Assuredly it must be a painful scandal to the German.

It was only a little before tea time, and in the dining hut long deal tables were neatly arranged with plates, cups, and saucers, with huge loaves of bread between, and bowls of jam and butter and cheese. On serving tables arose pyramids of egg cups. The colonel with his air of a thoughtful parent indicated these.

Any boy that wants it," he said, “can have a boiled egg with his tea. And look here, if you like."

He took us into a kitchen as wide as a barn and as clean as a dairy. Pails of tea cooled, sharpen-