"What's the difference between shouting the odds and shouting the blurry odds?" I asked.
"It's like this, Pat," Bill began to explain, a blush rising on his cheeks. Bill often blushed. "Shoutin' the odds isn't strong enough, but shoutin' the blurry odds has ginger in it. It makes a bloke listen to you."
Stoner was sitting on the bank of La Bassée canal, his bare feet touching the water, his body deep in a cluster of wild iris. I sat down beside him and took off my boots.
I pulled a wild iris and explained to Stoner how in Donegal we made boats from the iris and placed them by the brookside at night. When we went to bed the fairies crossed the streams on the boats which we made.
"Did they cross on the boats?" asked Stoner.
"Of course they did," I answered. "We never found a boat left in the morning."
"The stream washed them away," said Stoner.
"You civilised abomination," I said and proceeded to fashion a boat, when it was made I placed it on the stream and watched it circle round on an eddy near the bank.
"Here's something," said Stoner, getting hold of a little frog with his hand and placing it on the boat. For a moment the iris bark swayed unsteadily, the frog's little glistening eyes wobbled in its head then it dived in to the water, overturning the boat as it hopped off it.
An impudent-looking little boy with keen, inquisitive eyes, came along the canal side wheeling a very big barrow on which was heaped a number of large loaves. His coat a torn, ragged fringe, hung over the hips, he wore a Balaclava helmet (thousands of which have been flung away by our boys in the hot weather) and khaki puttees.