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However, at three o'clock the next morning (an unheard of, not respectable, secret hour in Auburn) P.Y.C. got a telegram by phone. The message was very much to the point and explained Me's unnaturally official visit and the loan of the handbook.

It said "Collect seven hundred gas-masks for your area and fit," and was signed "A.R.P., Fishling."

P.Y.C. got up dutifully and fetched out the car. Fishling is eight miles from Auburn and, although we come in its rural area, it is not very much used by us since it is not so large or so modern as Bastion, ten miles in the other direction. Fishling was practically unknown to us, therefore, as far as the townsfolk were concerned.

The next we heard of P.Y.C. was at noon, when he phoned in great haste to tell us to send a lorry, book the hall, and get a wireless loudspeaker down there. In a larger place none of these demands would present much labour, but in Auburn, where there is only one lorry available for odd jobs, the custodian of the hall is also the postman, and the only suitable wireless loudspeaker is owned by Albert, who may be absolutely anywhere doing any conceivable type of job for anybody, it represented a sort of minor mobilisation.