Title: Greenmantle
Author: John Buchan
CHAPTER ONE
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. I had not
seen the man since, though I had read about him in the papers. For
more than a year I had been a busy battalion officer, with no other
thought than to hammer a lot of raw stuff into good soldiers. I had
succeeded pretty well, and there was no prouder man on earth than
Richard Hannay when he took his Lennox Highlanders over the
parapets on that glorious and bloody 25th day of September. Loos
was no picnic, and we had had some ugly bits of scrapping before
that, but the worst bit of the campaign I had seen was a tea-party to
the show I had been in with Bullivant before the war started. [Major
Hannay's narrative of this affair has been published under the title
of _The Thirty-nine Steps_.]
The sight of his name on a telegram form seemed to change all
my outlook on life. I had been hoping for the command of the
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