"Delighted," said the boy, and his hearers chuckled at the frank admission.
"It's young blood and not knowin' things that makes you say that," said Bubb, shaking his head with an air of wisdom at which his mates would have laughed if their rest had been assured for another week. But now as they sat there waiting for the signal to move up to the fighting line which they knew so well, it was a different matter....
The talk turned to England; the newcomer, whose name was Frank Reynolds, had much to tell about home, his people, his life at school, and above all, about his life in the Army. He was the only child of a head clerk in a London Bank, his father had died recently, and now only the mother remained at home. She lived in Hampstead, and was rather well to do, having money left to her by a rich relative. She was very fond of her boy and would send him parcels twice a week.
"No cigarettes, though," said Reynolds. "She doesn't know that I smoke, and I daren't tell. It would hurt her.... I learned to smoke since I joined the Army; just about three cigarettes a day."
"I could smoke that many when drinking my tea," said Bubb.
Conversation ceased at that moment, for the whistle was blown in the street and the soldiers were forming up preparatory to moving off to the trenches.
The battalion set off and marched along the road by the river, company after company, with little connecting files in between. Not the slightest breeze was awake, the river was silent, and the tall, graceful poplars which lined their route looked blacker and straighter than usual. They seemed to have gone to sleep even as they stood. The whole world was in repose, the battalion's movement was a sacrilege against the gods of the still night.
The very trenches were quiet now, the artillery riot had died down and only a few starshells rose into the mysterious heights of the eastern sky. The company in front set up a brisk pace which required long, quick strides to follow. Benners' section turned off from the river and marched up a steep incline to the top of a low hill opening out on a wide, far-reaching plain, which under the pale moonlight, looked more immense, and merged as it seemed into the distant sky.
Here and there a tall chimney stack stood high in air, dark shadows clinging to its base in startling contrast to the moonlight which rippled like molten silver over the top. A thin, white mist trailed across the meadows in long, formless streaks, bunching in the hollows and breaking away on the open. The air was full of the smell of water and mist and growing grass, in short, of the atmosphere of a summer night.
Smoking was not allowed. The enemy's trenches, miles away though they were, looked down on the road, and the glowing cigarette ends might be noticed. Then the road would be shelled....