The train rumbled away eastward, and the men scanned the bare country from the windows, remarking on its dreary character, scarcely relieved by the pollard willows that raised their naked boughs against the grey sky. By and by they got out at a small station, and marched along a straight road between rows of trees to a country village. They kept to the right side; the other was busy with empty supply wagons, lorries of familiar appearance, now and then a mud-caked motor car.
Some officers had gone on ahead to arrange billets. Arriving at the village, the majority of the men were accommodated in the barn and outbuildings of a large farm, a few in separate cottages. Kenneth, with Harry and Ginger and other men of their platoon found themselves allotted to a labourer's cottage, where shake-downs of clean straw had been laid on the floors of a couple of rooms. A road divided their billet from the garden of a good-sized house, in which quarters had been found for two or three of the officers.
Apart from the traffic on the road there was as yet no sign of war. No sound of guns broke the stillness of the spring afternoon. But it had become known that the firing line was only a few miles ahead, and the men were all agog with expectation of an early call to the trenches.
It soon appeared, however, that they were not yet to enter upon the real work of war. Rumour had it that Sir John French was waiting for further reinforcements before pursuing the forward movement recently started at Neuve Chapelle. Day after day passed in exercising, marching, practising operations in the field. Word came of other regiments pouring across the Channel and occupying other villages and towns behind the firing line. All day long they heard the distant bark of guns, and saw too frequently the swift passage of motor ambulances conveying their sad burdens to the coast. When off duty they strolled about the village, making friends of the hospitable villagers, romping with the children, playing football, cheerful, light-hearted, scarcely alive to the actualities of the desperate work in which they were so eager to engage.
One day a trifling incident occupied Kenneth's attention for a moment. He happened to have gone into a little shop to buy cakes for the children of the good people upon whom he was billeted. Several of the men were there making purchases, and one of them was vainly trying to explain his wants to the shopkeeper. Stoneway was standing by. Kenneth translated for his baffled comrade; then, suddenly remembering what he had overheard on the platform at St. Pancras station, he said to him:
"Why didn't you ask Stoneway to help you? He speaks French."
Stoneway looked astonished and startled, but said at once:
"Me! I know a word or two, but you can't call it speaking French. I couldn't do it."
Kenneth said no more, though his recollection of the energetic conversation at the station was very clear, and he wondered why the man had denied his accomplishment.
There was only one opinion of the kindness and hospitality of the villagers, and the men were particularly enthusiastic about the owner of the house across the road. Far from limiting himself to the sumptuous entertainment of the officers billeted on him, he went out of his way to lavish attentions on the soldiers, making them presents of cigarettes, and treating them to the wine of the country. The village had not suffered from the ravages of war, though the Germans had occupied it for a few days during their rush towards Calais; but it harboured many refugees from towns and villages farther eastward, and these were supported by the benevolent owner of the large house, who maintained a sort of soup kitchen where the homeless people could obtain free rations.