“It would be hardly fair to him, Punch,” said Pen.
“Never mind that. It would be fair to us, and it would be exercising your leg. Pretty muddle we should be in when the order comes to march and your poor old leg won’t go.”
“Ah, well, we shall see, Punch,” said Pen.
“Ah, I would; and soon. It strikes me sometimes that he’s getting rather tired of his job, him and all his chaps too. I’ve watched them when they come here of an evening to ask questions of the father and lay their heads together; and I can’t understand their jibber-jabber, but it’s plain enough to see that they are grumpy and don’t like it, and the way they goes on screwing up those bits of paper and lighting up and smoking away is enough to make you ill to watch them. ’Tain’t as if they were good honest pipes. Why, they must smoke as much paper as they do ’bacco. Think their captain is going to give it up as a bad job?”
“No, Punch.”
“Well, anyhow, I think you might ask him to take us out with him a bit. If you don’t like to do it on account of yourself, because, as you say, he might think it ungrateful, you put it all on to me. Look here. You says, if you can put it into French, as you wouldn’t mind it a bit. You says as it’s your comrade as wants to stretch his legs awful bad. Yes, and you tell him this too, that I keeps on worrying you about having pins and needles in my back.”
“Stuff, Punch!”
“That it ain’t, honour bright. It’s lying on my back so much up there in that there cock-loft. It all goes dead-like where the bullet went in. It’s just as if it lay there still, and swelled up nearly as big as a cannon ball, and that lump goes all dead and dumb in needles and pins like for ever so long. There, you try it on him that way. You say I’m so sick of it as never was.”
“And it was only yesterday, Punch, you told me that you were thoroughly happy and contented here, and the country was so beautiful and we were living so well that you didn’t mind if we stayed here for months.”
“’Twaren’t yesterday. It was the day before the day before that. You have got all the time mixed up. I don’t know where you would have been if I hadn’t counted up.”