ks and snatches, just as it had been
told to the Canadian, only the obscene words were unuttered and the
oaths, when they slipped out now and then, were followed by apologies.
Every soldier, even a Lancashire gutter snipe, has in him this curious
instinct. His talk is commonly full of blasphemies and obscenities,
devoid of all sense or meaning, efforts at futile emphasis, apparently
necessary and inevitable. But if there is a woman within earshot, no
such words pass his lips. A girl might sit all day among these men, and,
if they knew she was there, her ears would never be sullied with the
sound of a foul word.

Released at last from the dressing station, Wakeman and five or six
others were taken to the bathhouse. The corporal who led the way, the
bath orderly who provided soap and towels, and the wounded Irishman who
was given the bath next to Wakeman's, all heard scraps of the story,
learnt the essential fact that Wakeman and his pals had strafed the
Prussian Guard. It was the Irishman who reduced the excited boy to
silence for a few minutes.

"What do you want to be talking that way for?" he said. "Didn't we all
give them hell? Didn't I bring back three prisoners myself. Three? It's
five I would have had, only for a stray shell that bursted alongside of
the communication trench and lifted two of them off me. Bad luck to that
same shell, for a bit of it took me under the knee. But what matter?
Only, mind this, what you did to the Prussian Guard wasn't in it with
what that shell did to them two Boches. You'd have been sorry for the
blighters, so you would, if so be you could have found a bit of either
of them big enough to be sorry for."

Wakeman had no reply to make to that. It is not possible with a bayonet,
or even with a Lewis gun, to cause the total disappearance of an enemy's
body.

After his bath, with a clean shirt on him and a clean pair of socks,
Wakeman dined. There is no lack of good food in Number 50 Convalescent
Camp, and men recovering from wounds often have healthy appetites. But
Wakeman ate, gorged himself, to the astonishment even of the kitchen
orderlies. Plateful after plateful of stewed meat and potatoes, steaming
and savoury, disappeared. Yet there was no sign about the boy of the
lassitude of repletion. His eyes remained bright and glanced rapidly
here and there. His body was still alert, the movements of his hands
quick and decisive.

After dinner, rest Wakeman found himself with other new