“Come, scout,” said the corporal, slapping Petroff heartily on the shoulder, “don’t be down-hearted, man. That pretty little sweetheart you left behind you will never forsake such a strapping fellow as you; she will wait till you return crowned with laurels.”
Petroff was well aware that Corporal Shoveloff, knowing nothing of his private history, had made a mere guess at the “little sweetheart,” and having no desire to be communicative, met him in his own vein.
“It’s not that, corporal,” he said, with a serious yet anxious air, which attracted the attention of the surrounding soldiers, “it’s not that which troubles me. I’m as sure of the pretty little sweetheart as I am that the sun will rise to-morrow; but there’s my dear old mother that lost a leg last Christmas by the overturning of a sledge, an’ my old father who’s been bedridden for the last quarter of a century, and the brindled cow that’s just recovering from the measles. How they are all to get on without me, and nobody left to look after them but an old sister as tall as myself, and in the last stages of a decline—”
At this point the scout, as Corporal Shoveloff had dubbed him, was interrupted by a roar of laughter from his comrades, in which the “corporal” joined heartily.
“Well, well,” said the latter, who was not easily quelled either mentally or physically, “I admit that you have good cause for despondency; nevertheless a man like you ought to keep up his spirits—if it were only for the sake of example to young fellows, now, like André Yanovitch there, who seems to have buried all his relatives before starting for the wars.”
The youth on whom Shoveloff tried to turn the laugh of his own discomfiture was a splendid fellow, tall and broad-shouldered enough for a man of twenty-five, though his smooth and youthful face suggested sixteen. He had been staring at the fire, regardless of what was going on around.
“What did you say?” he cried, starting up and reddening violently.
“Come, come, corporal,” said Sergeant Gotsuchakoff, interposing, “no insinuations. André Yanovitch will be ten times the man you are when he attains to your advanced age.—Off with that kettle, lads; it must be more than cooked by this time, and there is nothing so bad for digestion as overdone meat.”
It chanced that night, after the men were rolled in their cloaks, that Dobri Petroff found himself lying close to André under the same bush.
“You don’t sleep,” he said, observing that the young soldier moved frequently. “Thinking of home, like me, no doubt?”