But as yet they have discharged no shots from their rifles. It has all been make-believe, with dummy cartridges, and fictitious ranges, and snapping triggers. To be quite frank, they are getting just a little tired of musketry training—forgetting for the moment that a soldier who cannot use his rifle is merely an expense to his country and a free gift to the enemy. But the sight of Bobby Little's art gallery cheers them up. They contemplate the picture with childlike interest. It resembles nothing so much as one of those pleasing but imaginative posters by the display of which our Railway Companies seek to attract the tourist to the less remunerative portions of their systems.
"What for is the wee felly gaun' tae show us puctures?"
Thus Private Mucklewame. A pundit in the rear rank answers him.
"Yon's Gairmany."
"Gairmany ma auntie!" retorts Mucklewame. "There's no chumney-stalks in Gairmany."
"Maybe no; but there's wundmulls. See the wundmull there—on yon wee knowe!"
"There a pit-held!" exclaims another voice. This homely spectacle is received with an affectionate sigh. Until two months ago more than half the platoon had never been out of sight of at least half a dozen.
"See the kirk, in ablow the brae!" says some one else, in a pleased voice. "It has a nock in the steeple."
"I hear they Gairmans send signals wi' their kirk-nocks," remarks Private M'Micking, who, as one of the Battalion signallers—or "buzzers," as the vernacular has it, in imitation of the buzzing of the Morse instrument—regards himself as a sort of junior Staff Officer. "They jist semaphore with the haunds of the nock—"
"I wonder," remarks the dreamy voice of Private M'Leary, the humorist of the platoon, "did ever a Gairman buzzer pit the ba' through his ain goal in a fitba' match?"