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"I like the crowds, I do. A place where all ye hear all day is a mowin' merchine clackin', or see a hoss switchin' his tail to keep off the bluebottles, didn't never coax me, much." "The bucolic life does not tempt you, then?" said Laura, her eyes twinkling. "Never heard it called that afore. Colic's it serious thing 'specially with babies. But the city suits me, I can tell ye," said Liz.
The station-master appeared from his den. Officers of the Army Medical Service and the Red Cross strolled down. And the stairs and platform echoed to the pattering of the feet of hosts of industrious "Bluebottles," fetching stretchers and blankets. The blue-uniformed volunteers who form a portion of the London Ambulance Column are nicknamed the Bluebottles in allusion to their dress.
The Bluebottles were "civilians" ... there you have it. We who would probably never do any battlefield soldiering in our lives looked down on all civilians who had the impudence to wear a uniform of any sort. Such is the behaviour of the sterner sex at a moment when its sole thought should be of sensible and efficient co-operation in the performance of duty.
Each movement of the leathern-hided, wall-eyed steed which did our bidding was accompanied by a swishing of a sandy tail which had for its object the brushing away of autumn's harbingers, the bluebottles.
It is strange, too, that, though flies will blow a dead sheep almost immediately, they will not touch one that is living and healthy. Coupling their good nature in this respect with the love of neatness and hatred of untidiness which they exhibit, I incline to think them decidedly in advance of our English bluebottles, which they perfectly resemble in every other respect.
The insect, especially in the larval stage, is the principal devourer of the mushroom. We must distinguish between two groups of consumers. The first really eat, that is to say, they break their food into little bits, chew it and reduce it to a mouthful which is swallowed just as it is; the second drink, after first turning their food into a broth, like the bluebottles.
Or his account of the huge spiders that prey on bluebottles and gilded flies in green pathless forests; or of the great Pacific Ocean, that the natives look upon as the gulf that parts time from eternity, and that is to waft them to the spirits of their fathers? After all this, Mr. Hunter must find Mr.
But it was not meant to live in; it was merely a nursery. All day long the happy pair enjoyed each other's company aloft, leaping from corn-ear to thistle-head, from thistle-head to poppy, and back again to corn-ear, feasting, frivolling, stalking bluebottles.
He sank back heart-broken, and the bluebottle circled solemnly overhead, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. Buz-z-z-z! whir-r-r! He was back in the wheat-stack once more, listening to the dull humming of ten thousand bluebottles. From without came the sound of heavy tramping feet, whirring wheels, rough, human voices.
It is a nickname which, let me say at once, any man might be proud of. I know not whether the history of the Bluebottles has yet been written, but certain it is that their doings have got into newspaper print less often than they deserved. For theirs is a double rôle which truly merits the country's admiration.
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