The boys outdid themselves that night. How well they sang those songs of home! We were carried back thousands of miles across the deep to our dear old Canada, and many an eye was wet with tears which dare not fall.
But reminiscence fled when Sergeant Honk assumed the stage. Some one had told Honk he could sing, and—subtle flatterer—he had been believed. With the first wild squeaky note we were back, pell-mell in France. The notes rose and fell—but mostly fell; stumbling over and over one another in their vain endeavour to escape from Honk. Some maintained he sang by ear. Perhaps he did—he didn't sing by mouth and chords long lost to human ken came whistling through his nose. The song was sad—but we laughed and laughed until we wept again.
THE SONG WAS SAD—BUT WE LAUGHED AND LAUGHED UNTIL WE WEPT AGAIN
At the end of the first verse he seemed a little bewildered by the effect, but he had no advantage over us in that respect. At the end of the second verse, seeing his hearers in danger of apoplexy, he hesitated, and turning to Taylor, the pianist, muttered in an aside:
"They downt understand h'English, them bloakes—this ayn't a funny song—blimed if I downt quit right 'ere, and serve 'em jolly well right too!"
And under a perfect storm of applause and cries of protest, Honk departed as he had come—anglewise.
Tim and his brother then had a boxing-bout; and Cameron, who acted as Tim's second, drew shrieks of joy from his French admirers, between rounds, as he filled his mouth with water and blew it like a penny shower into the perspiring breathless face of Tim.
"A wee drap watter refraishes ye, Tim," he declared argumentatively after one of these showers.
"Doze Pea-jammers tinks it's funny," Tim puffed. "Let dem have a good time—dey ain't see'd nuthin' much lately—-an' a good laff 'ull help dem digest dere 'patty de frog-grass!"