My mates were smoking, and the whole place was dim with tobacco smoke. In the thick haze a man three yards away was invisible.
"Yes," said a red-haired sergeant, with a thick blunt nose, and a broken row of tobacco-stained teeth; "we're off for the doin's now."
"Blurry near time too," said a Cockney named Spud Higgles. "I thought we weren't goin' out at all."
"You'll be there soon enough, my boy," said the sergeant. "It's not all fun, I'm tellin' you, out yonder. I have a brother——"
"The same bruvver?" asked Spud Higgles.
"What d'ye mean?" inquired the sergeant.
"Ye're always speakin' about that bruvver of yours," said Spud. "'E's only in Ally Sloper's Cavalry; no man's ever killed in that mob."
"H'm!" snorted the sergeant. "The A.S.C. runs twice as much risk as a line regiment."
"That's why ye didn't join it then, is it?" asked the Cockney.
"Hold yer beastly tongue!" said the sergeant.