"Yessir," says th' sentry. His mouth was twistin' up on him, an' th' Lieutenant's, an' everybody's, but just us and the Old Man's. He looks sort of surprised.
"Is they any jokes around here I ain't noticed?" he says. "I do love a joke. H'm. You seen any, Clancy?"
"Nossir," says Terry, pretty sick.
The sentry grinned all th' time he was marchin' us out, an' the news spread quick, and they was grins to meet us all the way. An' then th' sentry begins to guy us.
"You've skipped a stalk on y'r left flank, Clancy," he says. "I shall have to report it. And tie th'm in neat bundles of twelve stalks, is the orders, retire fifty paces, and salute th' flag."
"Cut it out, Skinny," says Terry. "He said bundles of fifty. I heard him m'self."
"Bundles o' hell an' fifty paces," says Skinny. "You can go an' ast him if ye won't believe me. Wouldn't ye like, perhaps, to go an' ast him? I'll march ye in with pleasure."
"Have y'r laugh while ye've got a place f'r it," says Terry. "I'll make y'r face over for ye, ye hyeener, when I get a chanst."
"Intimidatin' a sentry," says Skinny, but he shut up, far as talk went. On'y he made a bugle of his nose, an' begun to hum little tunes through it, and then th' crowd begun driftin' out on th' verandahs and caught on, and all you could hear was that whole damn parrot-faced battalion blowin' through their noses, Umpty-dee-he-hee-heee-he-he-hee-hum-hum-hum!
Terry and me said nothin' and picked busy f'r a while, but about th' hundre'th bundle th' hot stones and th' sun an' yesterday's beer an' th' crowd loafin' in th' cool verandahs an' ev'rything else all took holt of me to onct.