Page:Sapper--No man's land.djvu/204

202 Cut this one down one night and put up a dummy in its place." The C.R.E once again considered the wretched stump. "Not a bad idea, General; the only question is who is to do it. It will have to be a good model, or the Huns will spot the difference; and …" Suddenly his face cleared. "By Jove! I've got it—Bendigo Jones. He's the man for the job."

"And who the deuce is Bendigo Jones?" asked the General, as the Sapper rapidly jotted down something in his note-book. "He sounds like a prize fighter or the inventor of a patent medicine."

"Bendigo Jones, General, is my latest acquisition. I have it on no less an authority than his own that he is a very remarkable man. I gather that he is futurist by inclination, and dyspeptic by nature, which I take to be a more or less natural sequence of events. At present he adorns my office, and looks intense."

"He sounds rather like a disease," murmured the Brigade Major. "From what you say, I gather he considers himself an artist."

"He sculpts, or whatever a sculptor does when he gets busy." The Colonel smiled gently. "How he ever blew out here I cannot imagine, but these things will occur. I offended him mortally, I regret to say, the first day he arrived, by confessing that I had never even heard his name, much less seen his work, but I think he's forgiven me. I allowed him to arrange the timber yard to-day more æsthetically, and the Sergeant-major thinks he is soft in the head, so Bendigo is supremely happy."