"It's not to us, it's to the Boches and the others that you must say that."
"It's to all the world," said Termite; "that's why I'm an internationalist."
While Termite was slipping away somewhere else his questioner indicated by a gesture that he did not understand. "Never mind," he said to us, "that chap's better than us."
Gradually it came about that we of the squad used to consult Termite on any sort of subject, with a simplicity which made me smile—and sometimes even irritated me. That week, for instance, some one asked him, "All this firing—is it an attack they're getting ready?"
But he knew no more than the rest.
CHAPTER XII
THE SHADOWS
We did not leave for the trenches on the day we ought to have done. Evening came, then night—nothing happened. On the morning of the fifth day some of us were leaning, full of idleness and uncertainty, against the front of a house that had been holed and bunged up again, at the corner of a street. One of our comrades said to me, "Perhaps we shall stay here till the end of the war."
There were signs of dissent, but all the same, the little street we had not left on the appointed day seemed just then to resemble the streets of yore!
Near the place where we were watching the hours go by—and fumbling in packets of that coarse tobacco that has skeletons in it—the hospital was installed. Through the low door we saw a broken stream of poor soldiers pass, sunken and bedraggled, with the sluggish eyes of beggars; and the clean and wholesome uniform of the corporal who led them stood forth among them.