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Accordingly, after consultation with that eager searcher after knowledge, Second Lieutenant Little, he took the laudable but fatal step of carrying his difficulties to one Captain Wagstaffe, the humorist of the Battalion. Wagstaffe listened with an appearance of absorbed interest. Finally he said "These are very important questions, Mr.
"How did your fellows get on last night, Wagstaffe?" inquires Major Kemp. "Very well, on the whole. It was a really happy thought on the part of the authorities almost human, in fact to put us in alongside the old regiment." "Or what's left of them." Wagstaffe nods gravely. "Yes. There are some changes in the Mess since I last dined there," he says.
Wagstaffe buries his face in his glass mug. "What is the general attitude," asked Mr. Waddell, "towards the war?" "Well, one's own friends are down in the dumps. Of course it's only natural, because most of them are in mourning. Our losses are much more noticeable at home than abroad, somehow.
"Yes, they got him at Arras. Mucklewame is in hospital. Fortunately his chief wound is in the head, so he's doing nicely. Here is his letter." Bobby took the pencilled screed, and read: Major Wagstaffe, Sir, I take up my pen for to inform you that I am now in hospital in Glasgow, having become a cassuality on the 18th inst.
Presently the bombs began to arrive, passed from hand to hand. Wagstaffe returned, this time along the trench. "We shall have a tough fight for it," he said. "The Bosche bombers know their business, and probably have more bombs than we have. But those boys on our right seem to be keeping their end up." "Can't we do anything?" asked Bobby feverishly.
Wagstaffe nodded his head, and then cautiously unbuttoned his collar and rolled up the front of his helmet. Then, after delicately sampling the atmosphere by a cautious sniff, he removed his helmet altogether. Bobby followed his example. The air was not by any means so pure as might have been desired, but it was infinitely preferable to that inside a gas-helmet.
And leaving Bobby and his infant class to practise this new and amusing pastime, Captain Wagstaffe strolls away across the square to where the painstaking Waddell is contending with another squad. They, too, have a landscape target a different one. Before it half a dozen rifles stand, set in rests.
This, despite more than usually fractious behaviour upon the part of the Boche. Next morning, through a sniper's loophole, he exhibited the result of his labours to Major Wagstaffe. The Major gazed long and silently upon his subordinate's handiwork. There was no mistaking it. It stood out bright and gleaming in the rays of the rising sun, amid its dingy surroundings of rusty ironmongery.
"The whole business," observed Bobby, as he struggled into his equipment, "sounds so attractive that I am beginning quite to look forward to the next show!" "Don't forget the Boche machine-guns, my lad," replied Wagstaffe. "One seldom gets the chance," grumbled Bobby. "Is there no way of knocking them out?"
However, we must get together occasionally, and split a tin of bully for old times' sake." "Bully? By gum!" said Bobby thoughtfully. "I have almost forgotten what it tastes like. "But not all," said Wagstaffe. "No, not all. I I wonder how our chaps are getting on, over there." "The regiment?" "Yes. It is so hard to get definite news." "They were in the Arras show.
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