"Well, I'm glad you ain't, for they're naturally light-minded. I remember 'em well." He wandered on with his questions and comments. "Is it a fact, Tom, or was you just joking when you wrote home that the soldiers took so many baths?"
"Yes, they do."
"Well, that beats me! It's a wonder you didn't all die of pneumonia!" He paused to absorb the phenomenon. Then his half-childish mind, prompted by a random recollection, flitted to another subject which set him to giggling. "And the little crawlers—did they bother you much, the little crawlers?"
"The little crawlers?" repeated Tom, mystified.
"Yes. Everybody used to get 'em just from living close together. Had to comb 'em out and pick 'em out of your clothes. The chase we used to call it."
"No, grandfather, crawlers have gone out of fashion. And no more epidemics of typhoid and dysentery either," said Tom.
"Times have certainly changed!" grumbled Grandfather Fragini.
Interested in their own reunion, they had paid no attention to a group of Tom's comrades near-by, sprawled around a newspaper containing the latest despatches from both capitals. It was a group as typical as that of the Grays around Hugo Mallin's cot; only the common voice was that of defence.
"Five million soldiers to our three million!"
"Eighty million people to our fifty million!"