“When be goin’?”
“Monday with Dick Thursby and Len Cotton. An’ I think young Walters, and Bibbie Short mebbe.”
“Oh, I say!”
“Ay. Comin’ along to-night?”
“Ay, if it doan’t rain.”
“Well, see you then.”
“So long, Ned.”
On the following Monday Ned said good-by to his mother, and sweetheart, and to Toffee, and he and the other four boys walked over to the recruiting office at Carchester. They were drafted into the same unit, and sent up to Yorkshire to train. (Yorkshire being one hundred and fifty miles away was presumably the most convenient and suitable spot.)
They spent five months there, and then Len Cotton was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, and the other four were placed in an infantry regiment and sent out to India. They did not get an opportunity of returning to Ashalton, but the night before he left Ned wrote to his mother:
“Dear Mother, I think we are off to-morrow. They don’t tell us where we are going but they seem to think it’s India because of the Eastern kit served out and so on. Everything all right, the grub is fine. Young Walters has gone sick with a bile on his neck. Hope you are all right. See Toffee dont get into Mr. Mears yard for this is about the time he puts down that pison for the rats. Everything O. K. Love from Ned.”