"Children and newspapers are low things.... And I was hit on the nose by a
wad, too! They oughtn't to be allowed blank ammunition!"
So we leaned against the railings in the warm twilight haze while the
battalion, silently as a shadow, formed up behind us ready to be taken
over. The heat, the hum of the great city, as it might have been the hum
of a camped army, the creaking of the belts, and the well-known faces bent
above them, brought back to me the memory of another evening, years ago,
when Verschoyle and I waited for news of guns missing in no sham fight.
"A regular Sanna's Post, isn't it?" I said at last. "D'you remember, Vee--
by the market-square--that night when the wagons went out?"
Then it came upon me, with no horror, but a certain mild wonder, that we
had waited, Vee and I, that night for the body of Boy Bayley; and that Vee
himself had died of typhoid in the spring of 1902. The rustling of the
papers continued, but Bayley, shifting slightly, revealed to me the three-
day old wound on his left side that had soaked the ground about him. I saw
Pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard himself against a spatter of
shrapnel, and Luttrell with a foolish tight-lipped smile lurched over all
in one jointless piece. Only old Vee's honest face held steady for awhile
against the darkness that had swallowed up the battalion behind us. Then
his jaw dropped and the face stiffened, so that a fly made bold to explore
the puffed and scornful nostril.
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