"Have most of you fellows washed, shaved, and eaten breakfast?" continued Herbert. "If so, we'd better all go out on the hill again for a little while and try to head off those snipers from the other side. Letty says they are getting busy after the big gun. Two bullets flattened on his sight guard a little while ago; one of them must be closer than they've been yet."
"Ain't you the feller to get him?" queried Martin Gaul.
"What's the matter, Gaul? Anything getting on your nerves?"
"No more'n on yours or anybody's. Show me the man who's in love with all this. That old gun up there would drive a stuffed dummy crazy, and bullets droppin' in here every now and then and expecting them Boches to drop in, too; and dirt and filth and crawlers and cookin' your own meals, and cold nights——"
"Do you think that's showing the right spirit? All of us are putting up with the same discomforts, the same nerve strain and we're getting sport out of it, or at least the consciousness that we must sacrifice comforts for the cause. You are the first I have heard complain. Best to chime in, old man, and cut out the kicks."
"Mebbe you'd kick, too, if you were sick," Gaul said.
"Sick? Well, now, that's different. What's the matter? Just how do you feel?"
"Sore all over. Cold, I reckon. Head aches. Pain in my face, too. Got no appetite."