There was a dead silence for a moment, and then a wild cheer went up that shook the hall until the windows rattled.
"Ye ain't stuffin' us again?" Wilson queried anxiously, when the noise had died away. "Ye done it so often afore."
Plantsfield looked at him with withering contempt. That his word—the word of the chief "rumourist" of the unit—should be doubted was almost too much for human endurance.
"I'll stuff you, ye young cub, if ye dare to doubt a man old enough to be yer grandfather," he returned scathingly; and then turning to the others he continued: "I seen the Mechanical Transport near Boulogne and was talkin' to them."
"Oh, I'll bet you wos talkin', all right," Wilson came back vindictively, "if ye got within fifty yards uv 'em."
Plantsfield's garrulity was proverbial. He had been known to buttonhole generals and draw them to one side to whisper a choice bit of scandal in their unwilling ears—his age excusing him from reprimand.
He looked wrathfully at Wilson, but that wily youth kept his rosy cheeks carefully out of arm-shot. Turning back to his more respectful auditors, and for the nonce ignoring the disrespectful one, he pursued:
"The Supply Column on their way to the front saw a German aeroplane over them, forgot discipline in their excitement, jumped down off their waggons and blazed away at it with their rifles."
"Without orders, I'll bet?" exclaimed Jogman, slapping his knee.
"Of course," grinned Plantsfield.