"When our boys get back! Some of them are never coming back again,
worse luck!"
"Still," said Wagstaffe, "what they did was worth doing, and what they
died for was worth while. I think their one regret to-day would
be that they did not live to see their own fellows taking the
offensive--the line going forward on the Somme; the old tanks waddling
over the Boche trenches; and the Boche prisoners throwing up their
hands and yowling 'Kamerad'! And the Kut unpleasantness cleaned up,
and all the kinks in the old Salient straightened out! And Wytchaete
and Messines! You remember how the two ridges used to look down into
our lines at Wipers and Plugstreet? And now we're on top of both of
them! Some of our friends out there--the friends who are not coming
back--would have liked to know about that, Bobby. I wish they could,
somehow."
"Perhaps they do," said Bobby simply.
It was close on midnight. Our "two old soldiers, broken in the wars,"
levered themselves stiffly to their feet, and prepared to depart.
"Heigho!" said Wagstaffe. "It is time for two old wrecks like us to be
in bed. That's what we are, Bobby--wrecks, dodderers, has-beens! But
we have had the luck to last longer than most. We have dodged the
missiles of the Boche to an extent which justifies us in claiming that
we have followed the progress of their war with a rather more than
average degree of continuity. We were the last of the old crowd, too.
Kemp has got his Brigade, young Cockerell has gone to be a Staff
Captain, and--you and I are here. Some of the others dropped out far
too soon. Young Lochgair, old Blaikie--"
"Waddell, too," said Bobby. "We joined the same day."
"And Angus M'Lachlan. I think he would have made the finest soldier of
the lot of us," added Wagstaffe. "You remember his remark to me, that
we only had the bye to play now? He was a true prophet: we are dormy,
anyhow. (Only cold feet at Home can let us down now.) And he only saw
three months' service! Still, he made a great exit from this world,
Bobby, and that is the only thing that matters in these days. Ha! H'm!
As our new Allies would say, I am beginning to 'pull heart stuff' on
you. Let us go to bed. Sleeping here?"
"Yes, till to-morrow. Then off on leave."
"How much have you got?"
"A month. I say?"
"Yes?"
"Are you doing anything on the nineteenth?"
Wagstaffe regarded his young friend suspiciously.
"Is this a catch of some kind?" he enquired.
"Oh, no. Will you be my--" Bobby turned excessively pink, and
completed his request.
Wagstaffe surveyed him resignedly.
"We all come to it, I suppose," he observed.
"Only some come to it sooner than others. Are you of age, my lad? Have
your parents--"
"I'm twenty-two," said Bobby shortly.
"Will the bridesmaids be pretty?"
"They are all peaches," replied Bobby, with enthusiasm. "But nothing
whatever," he added, in a voice of respectful rapture, "compared with
the bride!"