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Updated: May 28, 2025
Another ten minutes' laboured progress brought them to a place where several ways met. "This is the beginning of the reserve trenches, sir," announced the guide. "If we'd come the way I " "Lead on!" said Ayling, and his perspiring followers murmured threatening applause. The guide, now in his own territory, selected the muddiest opening and plunged down it.
So the first-fruits of the raid was Captain Ayling, of the Emma Gees. He had stationed himself in a concrete emplacement in the front line, the better to "observe" the fire of his guns when it should be required.
After a good deal of inquiry and fussing about, he ascertained that one of the gentlemen was in China, one was dead, and a third about whom Ayling also inquired could not be traced at all. Ayling went out and walked for a while through the streets, but was driven back to the club by the chill drizzle which suddenly began to descend. He sat down in a chair near a window that had been his favorite.
"I heard one of my men cry out that he was hit," continued Ayling, "and I came to the conclusion that we would have a better chance as moving targets than as fixed; so I passed the word to get up and move forward steadily, in single file. Ultimately we struck a stray communication-trench, into which we descended with as much dignity as possible. It led us into some quarries."
As for the men, they simply laugh in the sergeant-major's face. They are 'experts, if you please, and are struck off all fatigues and company duty! It was bad enough when Ayling pinched fourteen of my best men for his filthy machine-guns; now, the company has practically degenerated into an academy of variety artists. The only occasion upon which I ever see them all together is payday!"
It was plain that "Miss Peggy" was one of Chedsey's enthusiasms. A young lady now ... and soon to be married to a fine young gentleman of one of the best Scotch families.... She'll have a title some day.... Picture in the Sketch recently perhaps he could find it for Mr. Ayling.
Ayling said to himself that he could talk to Bessie Lonsdale of things he had never been able to speak of to any one else, because they had had so much common experience. For from the beginning Ayling had had the illusion that Bessie Lonsdale, as well as he, had been away all those years, and had just come back to London again.
I don't know much about machine-guns myself; so perhaps you" to Ayling "will walk round with me outside the position, and you can select your own emplacements." "I shall be charmed," replied Ayling, and Blaikie chuckled. "I'll just get your infantry to work first," continued the phlegmatic youth. "This way, sir!"
Her room opened directly into the garden, and she put on stout boots and a walking-suit and a soft little hat of green felt, and went out. Ayling, who had evidently risen early, was coming toward her, swinging a great, freshly whittled staff cut from the woods beyond the inn. He called to her: "You see! The sun does shine at Homebury St. Mary!"
"A fair amount, sir," replied Ayling, with professional satisfaction. "There was a lot of firing from our right front, so I combed out all the bushes and house-fronts I could see; and presently the firing died down, but not before I had had one gun put out of action with a bullet through the barrel-casing.
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