present as I said. They had women at it though in wonderful uniforms.”
“But how did you ever marry one?”
“By mistake as I explained before.”
“Go on and tell me.”
“There were more maps in the room than Our Lord could read on his best day,” the Colonel continued. “There were the Big Picture, the Semi-Big Picture and the Super-Big-Picture. All these people pretended to understand them, as did the boys with the pointers, a sort of half-assed billiard cue that they used for explanation.”
“Don’t say rough words. I don’t know, even, what half-assed means.”
“Shortened, or abbreviated in an inefficient manner,” the Colonel explained. “Or deficient as an instrument, or in character. It’s an old word. You could probably find it in Sanscrit.”
“Please tell me.”
“What for? Why should I perpetuate ignominy just with my mouth?”
“I’ll write it if you want. I can write truly what I hear or think. I would make mistakes of course.”
“You are a lucky girl if you can write truly what you hear or think. But don’t you ever write one word of this.”
He resumed, “The place is full of correspondents dressed according to their taste. Some are cynical and some are extremely eager.
“To ride herd on them, and to wield the pointers, there is a group of pistol-slappers. We call a pistol-slapper a non-fighting
