(It was here that the bun episode occurred.)
"Well,—he got buried. Parapet blown in. And when they got him out he was—hurt some." (The Sergeant remembered that one must not shock the ladies.)
"That was all I would have known about it," he went on, "only we happen to turn up in hospital together. I wakes up one mornin' and finds him in the next cot. He was supposed to be recoverin' but was somehow botchin' the job.
"'Where's the fiddle?' I says to him one day when I was feelin' social. And then, all of a minute, I guessed why he wasn't patchin' up like what was his duty. You see, that b-blessed parapet hadn't had any more sense than to go and spoil his right arm for him—the one he fiddled with, see?"
(Here the Sergeant delivered one brick loaf instead of two sandwich ditto.)
"Well, they kept sayin' there weren't any reason he shouldn't mend up. But he didn't. And one night—" the Sergeant pulled up the cart so quickly that Desire almost fell out of it. "You won't believe this part," he said in a kind of shamefaced way.
"Try me."
"Well then, one night he called to me in a kind of clear whisper. 'Bob!' he says, 'I've got my fiddle!'
"'Sure you have, old cock,' says I.
"'And my arm's as good as ever,' says he.