"Of course," said I; "everybody does. Why?"
Albert Edward grinned. "Because there's another bloke here with a dark past, only this is t'other way about; he's a bumpkin turned sailor, Blenkinsop by name, you know, the Shropshire hackney breeders. He's Naval Division. Ever rub against those merchants?"
I had not.
"Well, I have," Albert Edward went on. "They're wonders; pretend they're in mid-ocean all the time, stuck in the mud on the Beaucourt Ridge, gummed in the clay at Souchez—anywhere. They 'come aboard' a trench and call their records-office—a staid and solid bourgeois dwelling in Havre—H.M.S. Victory. If you were bleeding to death and asked for the First Aid Post they wouldn't understand you; you've got to say 'Sick bay' or bleed on. If you want a meal you've got to call the cook-house 'The galley,' or starve.
"This matelot Blenkinsop has got it very badly. He obtained all his sea experience at the Crystal Palace and has been mud-pounding up and down France for three years, and yet here we have him now pretending there's no such thing as dry land."
"Not an unnatural delusion," I remarked.
"Well," resumed Albert Edward, "across the table from him sits our old MacTavish, lisping, 'What is the Atlantic? Is it a herb?' I'll bet my soul they're in their billets at this moment, MacTavish mugging up some stable-patter out of NAT GOULD, and Blenkinsop imbibing a dose of ship-chatter from 'BARTIMEUS.' They'll come in for food presently, MacTavish doing what he imagines to be a 'cavalry-roll,' tally-hoing at the top of his voice, and Blenkinsop weaving his walk like the tough old sea-dog he isn't, ship a-hoying and avasting for dear life."
"They're both going on leave with you to-morrow, aren't they?" I asked.
Albert Edward nodded.
"Then their game is up," said I.