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"Yes," remarked Major Veasey, "we are certain to move again to-night. The wise man will take a lie down until tea-time." And he hied him to the wire bed in the guard-room.
I looked inside some tin huts: one had been used as a German mess, another as an officers' bath-house; flies swarmed upon old jam and meat tins; filth and empty bottles and stumps of candles, a discarded German uniform, torn Boche prints, and scattered picture periodicals. "There's no one here," mused Major Veasey. "I suppose the battery has moved forward again."
"Our carts have as much as they can carry already." The doctor seemed disposed to have the matter out; but Major Veasey, who had been regarding him fixedly, and looked amused, stopped further argument by saying, "Don't worry, doctor. There are plenty of beds at the new position." The doctor sat down silent but troubled, and when the others went he said he would stay behind with me.
These two hated warfare, and were nervously conscious that, should they fail in firmness, Ebenezer would deal with them. Mary went swiftly up to the wagon, and laid one hand upon the wheel. "I've got John Veasey in my house," she began rapidly. "I can't stop to talk. He's pretty sick." Ebenezer cleared his throat again. "We understood his folks had put him on the town," said he.
They say there was a certain old Veasey who, some eighty odd years ago, used to steal into the graveyard with his tools, and there, for love, scrape the mosses from the stones and chip the letters clear. He liked to draw, "creatur's" especially, and would trace them for children on their slates. He lived alone in a little house long since fallen, and he would eat no meat.
The laths showed meagrely; it was a skeleton of a room, and, sunken in the high feather-bed between the two windows, lay Johnnie Veasey, his buoyancy all gone, his face quite piteous to see, now that its tan had faded. Mary went up to the bedside, and laid one cool, strong hand upon his wrist.
The laths showed meagrely; it was a skeleton of a room, and, sunken in the high feather-bed between the two windows, lay Johnnie Veasey, his buoyancy all gone, his face quite piteous to see, now that its tan had faded. Mary went up to the bed-side, and laid one cool, strong hand upon his wrist.
There was so little fuss that numbers of quiet self-contained men seemed to be standing about doing nothing. Occasional high-velocity shells whizzed over our heads. Major Veasey suddenly emerged from the brigade-major's quarters, looking at his map. "Some of the Tanks and two companies of the s lost their way at the start," he told me, "but things have been pulled straight now.
And before lunch-time a briefly-worded order was received directing Major Mallaby-Kelby to report immediately to a Field Artillery Brigade of another Division. Orders are apt to arrive in this sudden peremptory fashion. Within an hour and a half the major had bidden good-bye to us and ridden off, a mess cart following with his kit. And Major Veasey came to reign in his stead.
"We've got quite a decent dug-out in the bank to sleep in," answered Major Veasey, getting up to go, "but our mess is rather in the open under a tarpaulin. However, it's quite a pleasant mess. Bullivant and Simpson came to dine last night, and we played bridge till eleven."
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