The two men rolled in the barrel of beer and hoisted it onto the table. Then, with full tankards handy and their pipes smoking like factory chimneys, the trio pulled their chairs up to the fire.
"Curse the army, I say!" said Sam in a challenging voice, apropos of nothing. He had been staring moodily at the crackling logs. "I want to get back to my wife an' kids."
"'Ear,'ear!" said Bill, raising his tankard before he drained it. "Curse the——army!"
"Chins!" said the little man. The proposal was drunk unanimously.
"I'm fed up with it," continued Sam, still in his mood of heavy reflection, "abso-bloomin'-lutely fed up! Marchin' 'ere, marchin' there, march all day, march all night; w'en you do stop, nothin' to eat; march back w'ere you come from, then right about face and march ag'in till you don't know w'ere you are. I joined the bloomin' army to fight, not to go on a blighted walkin'-tour!"
"Fight!" chimed in the little man. "You ought to 'a' been wiv us the other day! Talk about fightin'! Our company fought three thousand on 'em for hours an' hours—all alone. We killed 'undreds of 'em, me an' about a dozen others, till we 'ad to retreat. That's wot I calls fightin'!"
"Is it?" sneered Sam. "You wos one o' that picket guard wot run away from a cow, you mean. Fightin'! That ain't fightin'—bein' shot at by swine you can't see. I ain't 'ad a sight o' one on 'em yet, not one—an' yesterday forty men of our company was killed w'ere we laid in a 'tater-field. Ain't that so, Bill?"
"Forty-two," corrected Bill, "an' you couldn't find some of 'em after the shell 'ad 'it 'em."
"That's it," continued Sam, "shells! Shells plumpin' down and chokin' yer, shells over'ead as if the sky was breakin' in and droppin' down in bullets. Shells! That's wot I can't stand—bein' 'it on the back of the 'ead w'en you're lyin' down an' takin' cover accordin' to orders. It fair got on my nerves—all day, shells, shells, shells, an' not a mouthful to eat, an' then, at the end, right about face, quick march, we're beat. Beat! We'll see if we get beat! No,—it's just bloomin' silly—they march us orf our feet for a week just to make us a target for their damn artillery and then tell us we're licked and 'ave got to march back double-quick. I'm fed up wiv it. I've chucked the blank army. Chucked it, d'yer 'ear?" he turned savagely on the little man.
"You're right, mate," said the little man, standing up to refill his tankard at the barrel. "So 've I. W'y should we fight? That's wot I arsks yer. We're the pore workin'-man—we ain't got no property," he developed the manner of a street-corner orator, and thumped his tankard on the table. "We ain't got no stake in the country. Let them as 'as got a stake in the country fight for it, says I. Not get a pore honest workin'-man to go an' do it for 'em. 'Tain't right, mates. That's w'y I chucked the bloomin' army, I don't mind tellin' yer—because I felt it wasn't right! I'm a honest workin'-man an' I don't believe in war."