“We've had seven fellers sent home already,” said the engineer.
“We've had eight. Ain't we?”
“Sure,” growled everybody in the room.
“How bad was they?”
“Two of 'em was blind,” said Toby.
“Hell,” said the engineer, jumping to his feet as if taking a trick at poker. “We had a guy who was sent home without arms nor legs, and three fellers got t.b. from bein' gassed.”
John Andrews had been sitting in a corner of the room. He got up. Something had made him think of the man he had known in the hospital who had said that was the life to make a feller feel fit. Getting up at three o'clock in the morning, you jumped out of bed just like a cat.... He remembered how the olive-drab trousers had dangled, empty from the man's chair.
“That's nothing; one of our sergeants had to have a new nose grafted on....”
The village street was dark and deeply rutted with mud. Andrews wandered up and down aimlessly. There was only one other cafe. That would be just like this one. He couldn't go back to the desolate barn where he slept. It would be too early to go to sleep. A cold wind blew down the street and the sky was full of vague movement of dark clouds. The partly-frozen mud clotted about his feet as he walked along; he could feel the water penetrating his shoes. Opposite the Y. M. C. A. hut at the end of the street he stopped. After a moment's indecision he gave a little laugh, and walked round to the back where the door of the “Y” man's room was.
He knocked twice, half hoping there would be no reply.