"So we goes to the recruitin' station and the corp'ral there runs a tape over John. 'Ye'll do,' he says. 'Ye'll make a fine sodger.' So we went out, me an' him, and I goes wid him to the nearest tobacco shop. 'Now think of what ye're goin' to do,' I says till him. 'It's not an easy job, the job of a sodger. Now think,' I said, 'think, me boy.' He looked at me straight in the face and said, as if he was offended: 'Ye don't think I've done wrong, do ye?' Begorra, there and then, I just—and there were a lot iv people lookin' at us—I just caught him be the hand and squeezed it. 'Ye're a man,' I says, 'an' I'll get ye a pipe an' tobacco.'
"And so I did, and would ye misdoubt me when I say that he was as handy puttin' a match to a pipe as I was meself. But it's not easy to understand young cubs."
"When did you join up?" asked Snogger, who came into the dug-out at that moment.
"Long after that," said Billy. "There was a young fellow on the estate, the son of me mistress. A fine, hearty-lookin' fellow, a rale good lump iv a cub with laughey eyes and so handsome. He was a great friend iv mine. Well, he was an officer in the regulars, and he got hit in the eyes out here be a splinter iv a shell and he was knocked stone blind. He comes home, goes into hospital, and was there for long enough, but nothin' could be done. All hope was lost; he would be blind for life. And his mother, she took it as calm as anything. 'Billy,' she used to say to me, 'somebody must suffer and it's all for the country when all's said and done.' She was a brave woman; didn't wear her heart on her sleeve. I never saw her eyes wet, not until one day. 'Twas when her boy sent a wee fretwork letter-rack home from hospital as a present to his mother. He had made it himself, blind as he was, and it was very purty. I was doin' a bit of woodwork in the hall when it came in a parcel. The mother opened the parcel and saw what was inside.... And she began to cry as if she would never stop. After that, when anybody spoke of her boy, she would burst out weepin'.
"Well, I liked the boy," said Billy. "So I thought 'twas up to me to have revinge for him on the Germans. So I had a clean shave and went to the recruitin' office and signed on as a man of thirty-nine."
"Ye should have had more sense," said Bubb, getting to his feet, and disappearing into a corner. No doubt the boy, who was not feeling well, wanted to snatch an hour's sleep.
Snogger looked at the men.
"Six of you for rashun fatigue," he said. "Two to relieve the men on guard. Whose turn is it?"
"I'm one," said Bowdy.
"Me as well," said Billy Hurd.