"I dare say," goes on the Sergeant, "that the Germans are very Hun-wise. It will be a Hun-pleasant job for them."
When he starts on those puns it is a sign that he is in a good temper.
"If they think that they will get Hun-perturbed into our trenches, they make a Hun-believable mistake. These trenches are Hun-approachable."
But time passes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, and no order comes. You cannot imagine how bored one is during the long hours of waiting between attacks, but the anxiety which precedes the moments of real danger makes up for these weary intervals.
"Have you written something more?" finally asks Charlie.
Silently I offer him the sheets, and he begins to read. Meanwhile I am thinking that I ought to write to dad and tell him that I cannot compose a march in the trenches because of the booming of the guns which will never keep time—and to mamma that nothing was easier than to avoid the shells; she need not know that they cannot always avoid us—and to Bean, that there was no reason for anxiety at all, war being only an exaggerated picnic and casualties some sort of indigestion.
"I say," declares Sergeant Young, who has read the chapter in less time than was necessary, "I say, your Miss Doblana behaves in a rather Hun-maidenly manner. To call in the middle of the night upon a young, Hun-married man, with her hair Hun-done! I am afraid the public will find it Hun-conventional and even Hun-pardonable. Of course, she was in love with the pretty Salzburg officer."
"You jump to conclusions. I do not think that anything in my story may have suggested that."
"In this case, what did you think of her visit?"
"I thought ... that she had been obliged to go across her father's room, and that she would not have done so without some necessity. Her fear had been great, to judge from her wide eyes and her paleness. Would she have undergone any risk if there had been some chance of avoiding it?"