NOBODY CONCERNED
The wounded soldier was being attended by the doctor. The latter seemed to treat the case in a light-hearted manner. He prodded the soldier in the ribs, and grinned.
“You’ll be all right,” he said. “You’ve got a bullet in your left arm; but that does not trouble me in the least.”
“I don’t suppose it does,” said the soldier. “An’ if you’d got a bullet in both arms I don’t suppose it ’ud trouble me, either.”
HARD LUCK
He was a Canadian and he wore a corporal’s stripes. There he sat snugly in a sheltered part of his trench in that little corner of Belgium and played poker with a quartet of his comrades. Luck was against him. He had lost about everything he had to lose, when at the very height of the game—just after the dealer had done his best and worst—a shell came through the roof of the shelter, passed between the Canadian’s long, lean legs (luckily without hitting him), and buried itself harmlessly in the soft earth. The others of the party leaped up in not inexcusable haste and fled from the place, but the Canadian did not move.
The disturbance brought the company commander on the run.
“What’s up?” says he.
“Well, sir,” says the Canadian, “that there shell drops in on us and when it don’t explode at once I judge it is pretty safe not to go off at all. So I just set where I am. The cursed luck of it is that I’ve been playin’ away here all morning’ drawin’ rotten cards and losin’ my shirt, and here just as I holds the first four of a kind that’s gladdened my two eyes since Hector was a pup—and kings at that, sir—at that identical moment there comes this pifflin’ German turnip and the other fellows beats it.”