As they passed over a little railway station, innocent, as usual, of any suspicion of a platform, with a box set up as waiting-room, one of the men in the section of fours behind him stumbled heavily over the single lines.
"Nah then, Bill, wotcher doing to New Street Station?" New Street Station, with its smoke, and hurrying crowds, and shrieking steam to be compared to this clean, open, deserted spot! The daring of such a comparison was stupendous. It appealed instantly to the men's sense of the ridiculous. They roared with laughter.
The rain fell with depressing regularity, the wind blew gustily, but the ice had been broken, an example had been set, and they all vied with each other in forgetting their troubles in laughter.
"Blessed if it ain't Saturday night!" said one. It was impossible to say offhand what day it was, but after a slight argument they arrived at the astounding discovery that it was indeed Saturday. The discovery was astounding, because it was almost incredible to them that such misery could happen on a Saturday night—the night of the week—the night of marketing, of toothsome dishes, of melodrama and music halls.
"If my missus could see me now," roared a Reservist, "wouldn't her laff!" He was, perhaps, a great deal more amused than she would have been, poor woman.
"I ain't agoing to Church to-morrer," said another, with assumed languor. "I'll lay a'bed, an' smoke me baccy, an' read me Sunday papers" (derisive groans).
"Me and Sam's goin' on 'Midnight Pass' ter-night, ain't we, Sam?" inquired a young "timeserving" fellow. "Who's on at the Hipper-drome?"
"Oh! Mah-rie Lloyd."
"Get urt, you'm too young to see our Mah-rie." Roars of laughter, that almost shut out the wind with their heartiness!
The Subaltern could tell very accurately how their thoughts were flying homewards, and he could see the very same pictures in front of their eyes, because he lived near to where most of them lived, and knew the sights that most of them knew. Their homes on Saturday night! The warm red tiles of their kitchen floors; the "scrap" mats (laboriously hand sewn) in front of the bright fires in their "grates." The walls of their "parlours," bedecked with gorgeous lithographs, calendars and framed texts!