“Plucky, that girl,” he said. “Took it without a whimper. I wonder if she cared?”
Brand turned on him rather savagely.
“Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years, grown up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the business. They know that the odds are in favour of death.”
He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture.
“Christ God!” he said. “The tragedy of those people! The monstrous cruelty of it all!”
Fortune took his hand and patted it in a funny affectionate way.
“You are too sensitive, Wicky. ‘A sensitive plant in a garden grew’—a war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour and a little irony. It’s a funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right light.”
Wickham groaned.
“I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere.”
Fortune chanted again the beginning of his anthem: