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Wherever a head, or anything resembling a head, shows itself, he fires. Were it not for his enthusiasm, both sides would be sitting in their shirt-sleeves upon their respective parapets, regarding one another with frank curiosity; and that would never do. So the day wears on. Suddenly, from far in our rear, comes a boom, then another. Wagstaffe sighs resignedly.
"If that is the Kaiser's Christmas greeting to his loving followers," observed Wagstaffe drily, "I think he might safely have left it to us to deliver it!" "They say," interposed Bobby Little, "that the Kaiser is here himself." "How do you know?" "If that is true," said Wagstaffe, "they probably will attack. All this fuss and bobbery suggest something of the kind.
But the rapt attitude and quickened breath of Temporary Captain Bobby Little endorsed every word that Major Wagstaffe had spoken. As he rolled into his "flea-bag" that night, Bobby requoted to himself, for the hundredth time, a passage from Shakespeare which had recently come to his notice.
Wagstaffe draws back a strip of sacking which covers one loophole, and peers out. There, a hundred and fifty yards away, across a sunlit field, he beholds some twenty grey figures, engaged in the most pastoral of pursuits, in front of the German trenches. "They are cutting the grass," he says. "Let 'em, by all means! If they don't, we must.
"Golly!" observed Captain Little, with respectful relish. "That means," continued Wagstaffe, "that we shall be able to blow Brother Boche's immediate place of business to bits, and at the same time take on his artillery with counter-battery work.
The whole party were splashed with mud and soaked to the skin, for it had rained hard during the greater part of the night. They were all sick for want of food and sleep. Moreover, all had seen unusual sights. It was Sunday morning. Presently Wagstaffe completed his culinary arrangements, and poured out the cocoa into some aluminium cups. He touched Major Kemp on the shoulder.
"Will you send us down all the bombs you can spare?" Wagstaffe hoisted himself upon the parapet. "I will see our C.O. at once," he replied, and departed at the double. It was a risky proceeding, for German bullets promptly appeared in close attendance; but he saved a good five minutes on his journey to Battalion Headquarters at the other end of the trench.
Oh, they're a sweet lot, the British newspaper bosses!" "But what," inquired that earnest seeker after knowledge, Mr. Waddell, "is the general attitude of the country at large upon this grave question?" Captain Wagstaffe chuckled. "The dear old country at large," he replied, "is its dear old self, as usual. It is not worrying one jot about Conscription, or us, or anything like that.
It was no promising omen for the future of the nonjuring party, that the Court of St. Germains should have appointed him and Wagstaffe first bishops of that Communion. The consecration was kept for several years a close secret, and Robert Nelson himself may probably have been ignorant of the high dignity to which 'my neighbour the Dean' had attained.
"That is all," said Wagstaffe, "or I'm a Boche! There will be much noise and some irregular scrapping for days, but the tin lid has been placed upon the grand attack. The great Christmas Victory is off!" Then he added, thoughtfully, referring apparently to the star performer: "We have been and spoiled his entrance for him, haven't we?"
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