Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/367

Sympathetic Slacker to wounded Tommy. "Yes, old man, the sudden shock must have been absolutely terrible. I know the sort of thing. Only last night a careless blighter gave me a beastly knock on the nose with his billiard-cue. Horrid shock. I can sympathise with you!"

"Puttees," I said to Shopwalker No. 1, who had bowed himself into a note of interrogation.

"Puttees," shouted Shopwalker No. 1.

"Puttees," said Shopwalker No. 2.

"Puttees," Shopwalker No. 3 whispered confidentially into my ear. He led me by devious routes to a place bristling with military trimmings.

"Puttees," shouted Shopwalker No. 3 in a voice that brought me instinctively to attention and caused a timid-looking man to drop six boxes of boots. These shopwalkers ought to be at the Front. They would be invaluable as connecting files.

"Puttees?" murmured the timid man.

"Puttees is the word, and I said it first—the things you twist on to your legs," I said.

"That would be puttees, Sir. What price?"

"Are there different prices for puttees?"

"From two shillings to twelve-and-six."

"What makes the difference?"

"The quality and the shape. There are straight puttees and spiral puttees."

This didn't sound altogether unreasonable, as different people have different shaped calves. However, no man's calves—not even Bailey's—are entirely straight or wholly spiral, so I said, "I think that I would like something between the two to suit a normal leg."

"It isn't so much the shape of the leg as the shape of the puttees that matters. I'm afraid there's no intermediate shape."

"I suppose both shapes go on?"

"Yes, they both go on," he said hesitatingly; "and they do say that the spiral ones stay on. I don't rightly know—I don't profess to understand puttees—I'm really a boot man. I see our Expert is disengaged now, he will talk puttees to you."

The Expert told me all about puttees. I didn't understand any of it then and I don't understand all of it now. I gathered that puttees aren't the simpleminded things they look, and that I had better purchase the more expensive and amenable kind, known as the spiral. I had no wish to be parsimonious over the finishing touches to my uniform, so I agreed to the man's suggestion.

"What colour?" asked the Expert.

"The pretty greeny-greyish tint that is so much in vogue with the Volunteers."

"I'm sorry, we're out of the spirals in that colour. I've just sold the last pair, and there isn't another pair to be bought in London."

"Is there any chance of the khaki colour fading to our tint?"

"Our puttees do not fade."

I knew that if my legs were the wrong colour they would catch the eye of the Sergeant-Major and I should be in perpetual trouble; yet I misdoubted the straight variety and tried to compromise. "I'll take one of the two-shilling straight kind, and if I get on with it all right I'll come back and buy its mate."

"We only sell them in pairs."

I offered to recommend the odd one to a one-legged man of my acquaintance if I didn't want it, but he wouldn't break the set.

In the end I bought a straight pair and have lost about five pounds' weight in consequence. If nature had known when she set up in business that the object of man's legs was to support puttees, she would have put the thicker