A Mission is Proposed I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got Bullivant's telegram.

It was at Furling, the big country house in Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who was in the same case, was hunting for the marmalade.

I flung him the flimsy with the blue strip pasted down on it, and he whistled.
'Hullo, Dick, you've got the battalion.

Or maybe it's a staff billet.
You'll be a blighted brass-hat, coming it heavy over the hard-working regimental officer.

And to think of the language you've wasted on brass-hats in your time!' I sat and thought for a bit, for the name 'Bullivant' carried me back eighteen months to the hot summer before the war.