“Well, there are such a jolly lot of things there,” he defended himself. “Boche helmets—I’ve got three beauties—and belts, and buckles, and things. People at home like ’em.”
“Presumably people at home like you,” Anstruther said. “But they certainly won’t have you to like if you do it, and it’s possible their affection might even wane for a German helmet that had cost you your scalp. Verboten, Meadows; that’s good German, at any rate. Understand?”
Wally assented meekly. Jim Linton, apparently sublimely unconscious of the conversation, sighed with relief. His chum’s adventurous expeditions had caused him no little anxiety, especially as they were undertaken at a time when his own duties prevented his keeping an eye on the younger boy—which would probably have ended in his accompanying him. From childhood, Jim and Wally had been accustomed to do things in pairs: a habit which had persisted even to sending them together from Australia to join the Army, since Wally was too young for the Australian forces. England was willing to take boys of seventeen; therefore it was manifestly out of the question that Jim should join anywhere but in England, despite his nineteen years. And as Jim’s father and sister were also willing to come to England, the matter had arranged itself as a family affair. Wally Meadows was an orphan, and the Linton family had long included him on a permanent, if informal, basis.
“It’s jolly to get V.C.’s and medals and other ironmongery,” Anstruther was saying; “but I’d like to be the chap who organized the Toy Band on the retreat from Mons. He was a Staff officer, and he found the remains of a regiment, several hundred strong, straggling through a village, just dead beat. The Germans were close on their heels; the British had no officers left, and had quite given up. The Staff chap called on them to make another effort to save themselves, but they wouldn’t—they had been on the run for days, were half-starved, worn out: they didn’t care what happened to them. The officer was at his wits’ end what to do, when his eye fell on a little bit of a shop—you know the usual French village store, with all sorts of stuff in the window: and there he saw some toy drums and penny whistles. He darted in and bought some: came out and induced two or three of the less exhausted men to play them—it’s said he piped on one penny whistle himself, only he won’t admit it now. But you know what the tap of a drum will do on a route-march when the men are getting tired. He roused the whole regiment with his fourpence-worth of band and brought them back to their brigade next day—never lost a man!”
“Jolly good work,” said Blake.
“He won’t get anything for it, of course,” said Anstruther. “You don’t get medals for playing tin whistles; and anyhow, there was no one to report it. But—yes, I’d like to have been that chap.” He rose and stretched himself, taking advantage of a section of undamaged parapet. “Brother Boche is rather late in beginning his hate this morning, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps he’s given up hating as a bad job,” Wally suggested.
“We’ll miss the dear old thing if he really means to leave us alone,” said Anstruther. “Just as well if he does, though: our line is painfully thin, and it’s evident to anyone that our guns are short of ammunition: we’re giving them about one shell to twenty of theirs. And don’t they know it! They send us enormous doses of high-explosive shells, and in return we tickle them feebly with a little shrapnel. They must chuckle!”
“I suppose England will wake up and make munitions for us when we’re all wiped out,” said Garrett, scornfully. “They’re awfully cheery over there: theatres and restaurants packed, business as usual, bull-dog grit, and all the rest of it: Parliament yapping happily, and strikes twice a week. And our chaps trying to fight for ’em, and dying for want of ammunition to do it with. I suppose they think we’re rather lazy not to make it in our spare time!”
“I’m afraid they won’t appoint me dictator just yet,” Blake remarked. “If they would, I’d have every striker and slacker out here: not to fight, but to mend barbed-wire, clean up trenches, and do the general dirty work. First-rate tonic for a disgruntled mind. And I’d send what was left of them to the end of the world afterwards. Will you have them in Australia, Linton?”