United States or Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he asked. The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir I couldn't just at the moment say " "And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here, to this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?" "Chedsey, sir."
Ayling, leading a machine-gun section who were burdened with their weapons and seven thousand rounds of ammunition, mopped his steaming brow and inquired of his guide how much farther there was to go. "Abart two miles, sir," replied the youth with gloomy satisfaction.
It was at the end of the week that Ayling telephoned. And, although she had been avoiding even chance meetings with acquaintances, she found herself asking Ayling, whom she had not seen for twenty-five years, and whom she had known but slightly then, to come that day at five to tea.
"Hand me that protractor. Seventy-one, nineteen, true. That comes to" Ayling performs a mental calculation "almost exactly eighty-five, magnetic. We'll go out about nine, with two guns, to the corner of this dry ditch here the range is two thousand five hundred, exactly" "Our lightning calculator!" murmurs his admiring colleague. "No elastic up the sleeve, or anything!
Presently they discovered, and descended into, another trench all but the man with the tripod, who descended into it before he discovered it and proceeded upon their dolorous way. Once more the guide, who had been refreshingly but ominously silent for some time, paused irresolutely. "Look here, my man," said Ayling, "do you, or do you not, know where you are?" The paragon replied hesitatingly:
"They are living in Cambridge Terrace," Chedsey was saying. "Would Mr. Ayling like the address?" Ayling wrote down the address Chedsey gave him, and put it away in his pocket, with no more definite idea than that some day, if opportunity offered, he might look her up, for his old friend's sake. He began to inquire about other men Carrington, Farnsby, Blake.
"Beg pardon, sir, where shall I go now?" Ayling answered the question explicitly, and moved off, feeling much better. The late conductor of the party trailed disconsolately in the rear. "I should like to know wot I'm 'ere for," he murmured indignantly. He got his answer, like a lightning-flash. "For tae carry this," said the man with the tripod, turning round. "Here, caatch!"
When, promptly at two-fifteen, he rang her bell, she was waiting, hat and gloves on, and called out, "All ready!" as the taxi-driver followed Ayling up for her bag.... The spring had come up to meet them at Homebury St. Mary. So Bessie Lonsdale said to herself when she woke in her old-fashioned chintz-curtained room.
Some day, if Providence wills, the tale shall be resumed; and you shall hear how Major Kemp, Captain Wagstaffe, Ayling, and Bobby Little, assisted by such veterans as Corporal Mucklewame, built up the regiment, with copious drafts and a fresh batch of subalterns, to its former strength. But the title of the story will have to be changed.
“You will be in the starboard watch, Gilmore,” the mate said when the meal was finished. “That was the one Ayling had. The third lieutenant, Bowden, who is now in charge, isn’t half a bad fellow.
Word Of The Day