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Bobby caught his breath. He was just nineteen, and this was his first encounter with sudden death. "Who is it?" he asked unsteadily. The corporal saluted. "Private M'Leary, sirr. That last shot from the trench-mortar got him. It came in kin' o' sideways. He was sittin' at the end of his dug-oot, gettin' his tea. Stretcher party, advance!"
"I wonder," remarks the dreamy voice of Private M'Leary, the humorist of the platoon, "did ever a Gairman buzzer pit the ba' through his ain goal in a fitba' match?" This irrelevant reference to a regrettable incident of the previous Saturday afternoon is greeted with so much laughter that Bobby Little, who has at length fixed his picture in position, whips round.
The brook is at once identified. "Private M'Leary, shut your eyes and tell me what there is just to the right of the windmill." "A wee knowe, sirr," replies M'Leary at once. Bobby recognises his "low knoll" also the fact that it is no use endeavouring to instruct the unlettered until you have learned their language. "Very good!" says Captain Wagstaffe.
Only the look-out men, crouching behind their periscopes and loopholes, keep their posts. The wind is the wrong way for gas, and in any case we all have respirators. Private M'Leary, the humorist of "A" Company, puts his on, and pretends to drink his tea through it. Altogether, the British soldier appears sadly unappreciative either of "frightfulness" or practical chemistry. He is a hopeless case.
"Less talking there!" he announces severely, "or I shall have to stand you all at attention!" There is immediate silence there is nothing the matter with Bobby's discipline and the outraged M'Micking has to content himself with a homicidal glare in the direction of M'Leary, who is now hanging virtuously upon his officer's lips.
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