"For sale: We have on hand a large edition of C.'s 'Art of Dismounting'; the most complete work of its kind. Also K.'s treatise on 'The Tanbark; as I have found it.'"
So goes the Howitzer; and the audience are kindly told that at the end of the explosion the members of the medical department will pass in and out among the seats, administering "three pills, three times a day," to each of the wounded. "Warranted to cure."
I might give sharper-pointed details; but things that pass with the saying, in an evening frolic, might jar or rasp if written down in cold black and white. At the time (to their good sense be it spoken), no one laughs more readily than the sufferers themselves. And in spite of the local colour, which is confusing to a stranger, the jokes do very much explain themselves. As when the Irish schoolmaster, counting up his boys, suddenly demands: "Where, thin, is Tommy L.?" and a make-believe urchin cries out: "Plase, sor, he's puttin' on the shtamps on that last letter to Philadelphy!" the shout from the Corps makes it easy to guess what sort of hands will open the letter.
Now the curtain rises on Flirtation rocks and trees; and a well made-up damsel passes across the stage and out of sight, followed presently by a cadet captain, who hurries along in her steps, peering anxiously from side to side.
"She said she'd walk this way!" he murmurs perplexedly, as he too disappears.
The steps die out, and a third-class corporal comes on the scene. He also scans the seats and the bushes as he hastens by.
"Wonder if I'm late?" he questions. "She said she'd walk this way."
Again the silence settles down, broken this time by the less evenly assured tread of a pleb. "Not long from home, but very far!" is written all over him. Plainly he is following up a very unwonted gleam of pleasure.
"She said she'd walk this way!" he exclaims rather breathlessly as he dives in among the shadows.
The scenes, by the way, are remarkably well painted by those busy amateur hands, and vary greatly from year to year. "A street in old Vienna" was especially good; and some of the World's Fair incidents pertaining thereto, laughable enough.