United States or India ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A woman was screaming, children were shrieking, and a man was swearing in a thick hoarse voice. I knew what had happened it was midnight, the "public-houses had turned out," and Mr. Wagstaffe had came home drunk. The night passed heavily. Martin!" Then remembering that he was gone I began again to pray. I heard myself praying to the Blessed Virgin: "Oh, Mother of my God, let my child . . ."
That is to say, when defeated over the telephone, he can always lower his targets, and with his myrmidons feign abstraction or insensibility until an overheated subaltern arrives at the double from the five-hundred-yards firing-point, conveying news of surrender. Captain Wagstaffe was an admitted master of this game. We must add that he was a most efficient butt-officer.
I've a broad streak of personal vanity. I fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've other things, as you perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore, I get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable sense of ill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be working with me steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. He gets a laugh round the table at my expense.
Waddell has given the order: Four hundred at the road, where it passes under the viaduct fire! and six privates have laid the six rifles upon the point indicated. Waddell and Captain Wagstaffe walk down the line, peering along the sights of the rifles. Five are correctly aligned: the sixth points to the spacious firmament above the viaduct. "Hallo!" observes Wagstaffe.
At last Bill, getting fed up with this unusual solicitude, yelled back: 'What's all the anxiety abaht, eh? And Fortnum put his head round the traverse and explained. 'We're getting up a little sweepstake in our bay, he said, 'abaht the first casuality, and I've drawn you, ole son!" Wagstaffe chuckled. "That must have been the regiment that had the historic poker party," he said.
"They have some grisly notions about life and death," agreed Wagstaffe, "but they are extraordinarily kind to people in trouble, such as wounded men, or prisoners. You can't better them." "And now there are five millions of them. We are all in it, at last!" "We certainly are men and women. I'm afraid I had hardly realised what our women were doing for us.
But the elderly gentlemen greet their Hebe with a chorus of welcome, and clamour for precedence like children at a school-feast. And yet trusting wives believe that in his club, at least, a man is safe! Major Wagstaffe, D.S.O., having been absent from London upon urgent public affairs for nearly three years, was not well versed in the newest refinements of club life.
"Sense of proportion wasn't invented when women were made," commented Kemp. "But we are wandering from the subject, which is: what advantages are we, personally, deriving from the war? Wagger, what are you getting out of it?" "Half-a-crown a day extra pay as Assistant Adjutant," replied Wagstaffe laconically.
"Oh, I just climbed up on the top of the parapet and sat there for a bit," says Bobby Little modestly. "They were all right after that." "Had you any excitement, Ayling?" asks Kemp. "I hear rumours that you had two casualties." "Yes," says Ayling. "Four of us went out patrolling in front of the trench " "Who?" "Myself, two men, and old Sergeant Carfrae." "Carfrae?" Wagstaffe laughs.
Next moment gongs were clanging up and down the trench, and men were tearing open the satchels which contained their anti-gas helmets. Major Wagstaffe, who had been sent up from Battalion Headquarters to take general charge of affairs in the firing-trench, buttoned the bottom edge of his helmet well inside his collar and clambered up on the firing-step to take stock of the position.
Word Of The Day