"Ask the sergeant," said I. "Sergeant, how do you exercise a pigeon?
Lunge it, or put it through Swedish monkey motions?"
The sergeant rubbed his chin stubble.
"Can't say I remember the official method, sir; one might take it for
a walk at the end of a string, or----"
"These official pigeons," I interposed, "have got to be treated in
the official manner or they won't work; their mechanism becomes
deranged. We had a pigeon at the Umpteenth Battle of Wipers and
upset it somehow. Anyway, when we told it to buzz off and fetch
reinforcements, it sat on a tree licking its fluff and singing, and
we had to throw mud at it to get it to shift. Where it went to then
goodness only knows, for it has never been seen since. I am going to
do the right thing by this bird."
I thereupon sent a galloper to the next outpost, occupied by the Babe
and Co., asking him the official recipe for exercising pigeons. The
answer came back as follows:--
"Ask Albert Edward. All I know about 'em is that you mustn't
discharge birds of opposite sex together as they stop and flirt.
P.S.--You haven't got such a thing as a bit of cold pudden about you,
guv'nor, have you? I'm all in."