We fell asleep with goose feathers of snow whirling against the carriage windows, and woke to see a shot-silk sea flinging white lace along a fairy coast on one side and pink and yellow villas nesting among groves of palm and orange on the other.  
"Of course this sort of thing doesn't happen in real life," said Albert Edward, flattening his proboscis against the pane. "Either it's all a dream or else those oranges will suddenly light up; George Grossmith, in a topper and spats, will trip in from the O.P. side; girls will blossom from every palm, and all ranks get busy with song and prance—tra-la-la!"
 
The Babe kicked his blankets off and sat up. "Nothing of the sort. We've arrived in well-known Italy, that's all. Capital—Rome. Exports—old masters, chianti and barrel-organs. Faces South and is centrally heated by Vesuvius."
 
We rattled into a cutting, the sides of which were decorated with posters: "Good Healt at the England," "Good Luck at Tommy," and drew up in a flag-festooned station, on the platform of which was a deputation of smiling signorinas who presented the Atkinses with postcards, fruit and cigarettes, and ourselves with flowers.
 
"Very bon—eh, what?" said the Babe as the train resumed its rumblings. "All the same I wish we could thank them prettily and tell them how pleased we are we've come. Does anybody handle the patter?"
 
Albert Edward thought he did. "Used to swot up a lot of Italian literature when I was a lad; technical military stuff about the divisions of Gaul by one J. C?sar."
 
"Too technical for everyday use," I objected. "A person called D'Annunzio is their best seller now, I believe."
 
"Somebody'd better hop off the bus at the next stop and buy a book of the words," said the Babe.
 
At the next halt I dodged the deputation and purchased a phrase-book with a union Jack on the cover, entitled The English Soldier in Italy, published in Milan.
 
Among military terms, grouped under the heading of "The Worldly War," a garetta (sentry-box) is defined as "a watchbox," and the machine-gunner will be surprised to find himself described as "a grapeshot-man." It has also short conversations for current use.
 
"Have you of any English papers?"
 
"Yes, sir, there's The Times and Tit-Bits."
 
(Is it possible that the land of Virgil, of Horace and Dante knows not The Daily Mail?)
 
"Give me, please, many biscuits."
 
"No, sir, we have no biscuits; the fabrication of them has been avoided by Government."
 
"Waiter, show me a good bed where one may sleep undisturbated."
 
In the train:—
 
"Dickens! I have lost my ticket."
 
"Alas, you shall pay the price of another."
 
A jocular vein is recommended with cabbies:—
 
"Coachman, are you free?"
 
"Yes, sir."
 
"Then long live liberty."
 
Very young subalterns with romantic notions may waste good beer-money on foreign phrase-books and get themselves enravelled in hopeless international tangles, but not old Atkins. The English soldier in Italy will speak what he has always spoken with complete success in Poperinghe, Amiens, Cairo, Salonika, Dar-es-Salaam, Bagdad and Jerusalem, to wit, English.
 
But to return to our train. At nightfall we left the fairy coast behind, its smiling signorinas, flags, flowers and fruit, and swarmed up a pile of perpendicular scenery from summer to winter. During a halt in the midst of moonlit snows our carriage door was opened and we beheld outside an Italian officer, who saluted and gave us an exhibition of his native tongue at rapid fire.
 
"He's referring to us," said the Babe. "Answer him, somebody; tell him we're on his side and all ............