Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/39

 You can go on for days and weeks and months” But the Staff officer was leading him away. “Years, I tell you, can you work on these d trenches: and he waits for orders!”

“Peter, you’re feverish.” The Staff officer gently drew him on and they suddenly paused. “What,” he cried, in a voice of concentrated fury, gazing at a trench full of faces upturned to the sky, “what are you looking at? Turn your faces down, you fat-headed dolts. I know it’s a German aeroplane—I saw it three minutes ago—and there you sit with a row of white faces gazing up at him, so as to leave him in no doubt that the trenches are occupied. Keep down and don’t move, and above all don’t show him a great line of white blotches. They’re bad enough for us to bear as it is, but”

“James, you’re feverish now.” It was the sapper officer’s turn to draw him away. “But I admit,” he remarked sadly as they faded away, “that it’s all quite dreadful. They learn in time, but, to begin with, they want nurses.”

And, lest the morning perambulation of these two weary officers may seem