"All right. Send him down to see me."
Richards was left to his thoughts, though he was not alone. From somewhere in the dim recesses of the dug-out came the sound of deep regular breathing, showing where Lieutenant Donaldson was making the most of an opportunity for rest. The remaining two officers of "C" Company had been out all day reconnoitering the piece of front line in which they were to relieve the 4th Battalion, and had not yet returned. Richards found himself wishing that they would appear. For one thing, he wanted his dinner; and for another, he was just a shade anxious, though he would not for worlds have admitted it. Of course, reconnoitering was always a long job, and there had not been much shelling going on during the day. Besides, Denis Allen—senior subaltern of the battalion and next on the list for command of a company—was far too old a hand to run into unnecessary danger. On the other hand, little Shaw had only just come out from England; this was his first time in the line, and he was just the type of keen young thing to do something foolish out of ignorance or bravado.
Richards himself, with Donaldson and the sergeant-major, had been over the trenches the day before. It is not usual for all the officers of a relieving company to see the ground for themselves; but this was a piece of line quite new to the Home Counties' Territorial Division, of which the Middlesex Fusiliers' Brigade formed part. The authorities therefore had deemed it advisable to use even more care than usual.
It was bitterly cold. The Great Frost of January and February, 1917—the coldest spring that France had known for a period of years variously estimated at twenty-one, a hundred and eight, and intermediately—was still in being. Richards turned up the collar of his British warm and longed for soup. He was just considering the advisability of shouting to the servants to serve his dinner at once, when there came a trampling on the stairs, a metallic clang, and some picturesque cursing. A moment later, Denis Allen emerged from the gloom, followed by little Shaw.
"Thank God for my tin hat," said Denis piously. "That's about the only thing it's good for. I'd have brained myself long ago on these stairs without it."
He divested himself of the article in question, as also of his equipment, glasses and trench coat; these he piled upon the recumbent form of Donaldson, bringing that warrior to a sudden and profane wakefulness.
"Here," said Allen to Shaw, "we have the company commander sitting at home in luxurious idleness, while we poor blighters do his work for him outside in the cold. If you've drunk all the whisky, Dickie, there's going to be a mutiny. I'm simply perishing. Where's the dinner?"
"Here, sir," said Private Corder, the senior servant, entering with the soup.
"Bless you, Corder. May your shadow never grow less."
"No, sir. Please, sir, Private 'Iggins wants to see you, sir."