“Coughing like I am, I'd think you'd be more observant. I got t.b., young feller.”
“How do you know that?”
“They're going to move me out o' here to a t.b. ward tomorrow.”
“The hell they are!” Andrews's words were lost in the paroxysm of coughing that seized the man next to him.
“Home, boys, home; it's home we want to be.”
Those well enough were singing, Stalky conducting, standing on the end of his cot in his pink Red Cross pajamas, that were too short and showed a long expanse of skinny leg, fuzzy with red hairs. He banged together two bed pans to beat time.
“Home.... I won't never go home,” said the undertaker when the noise had subsided a little. “D'you know what I wish? I wish the war'd gone on and on until everyone of them bastards had been killed in it.”
“Which bastards?”
“The men who got us fellers over here.” He began coughing again weakly.
“But they'll be safe if every other human being....” began Andrews. He was interrupted by a thundering voice from the end of the ward.