“Et l’omelette, ma petite?” The Weasel spoke French perfectly, with only the slightest trace of accent.
“Sere prête dans dix minutes, mon Colonel.”
They passed through the bare narrow hall into a shuttered room, empty of furniture save for a huge table. Through one wall, heavily shored with great balks of timber, a narrow doorway led to the cellars below.
“If we were Germans,” remarked Stark, unbuckling his belt, throwing it crashing on the table, “we should sleep down there; the family upstairs. As it is. . . .” He left the sentence unfinished, implying the Englishman’s usual contempt for his own chivalry.
Monsieur le patron, a stubble-cheeked gaffer in shirt and trousers, shambled in; hoped they would be comfortable; shambled out again. Followed, hilariously, Doctor Carson.
“Well,” he said, in broadest Belfast, “I’m a proud man this day. We’re in action at last.”
Purves arrived; and the mess-box; Gunner Horne the cook, looking rather less cleanly than usual; Peter’s batman, Garton; and the Colonel’s Bombardier Michael, a nervous little fellow, clean-shaven, who had been a footman in private life; finally Caroline with an enormous omelette, a bottle of nameless wine. . . .
“Make ’emselves damn comfortable, I notice,” growled Lodden that evening, as he left Headquarters for the gun-pits at the foot of the field below the house.
“Wish I were on the ruddy Headquarters,” groused Gunner Mucksweat, heaving against the reluctant wheel of “B” Battery’s No. 2 gun. “Me too,” answered his mate, as the axles jammed in the narrow doorway of the pit.