"The Royal Reedshires!" was the proud reply. "What's your crowd?"
"Dirty Dick's!"
"Then good luck to you"; and Harry Hawke, remembering a certain famous hostelry in his native land of Shoreditch, felt a fierce thirst come over him.
"I'd give somethink to be in Dirty Dick's just na'—wouldn't you, Cockie?" he murmured hoarsely to his left-hand file.
"Not 'arf, I wouldn't," responded Tiddler with a great gulp.
Before long they left our own batteries behind them, and the roar of the firing, which never ceased, grew muffled in the distance.
They turned aside after a while, for the road was wanted for the motor ambulances carrying their loads of maimed and mangled men from the advanced dressing-stations to the Divisional Field Hospital, and meeting them were the big lorries rushing up food, their headlights shining brightly in long perspective until the approach of dawn extinguished them.
Then, when the grey light stole over the gently undulating country, officers and men looked at each other and at the battalion, and the tired faces were wan and sunken with something that was not mere physical fatigue.
The C.O., with his keen smile, and well-waxed little grey moustache, was no longer in his accustomed place; "Nobby" Clark, who sang such good songs at their improvised smokers, would never sing to them any more. As for A Company, reduced to little more than a platoon and a half, it straggled along like a sort of ragged advance guard, savage and sleepy—oh, so sleepy, and covered with dust from head to heel, which did not hide the ugly red splotches and smears that told of fierce grips and the "haymaker's lift."
But at last they reached the little village, which was the end of the journey, and broke off and crowded into a big barn that they had once occupied before; and Dennis, who had tottered along without seeing anything through his staring eyes for the last mile and more, tripped and fell on his face, and lay so still that no one worried about him.