“The kids will be coming into that store about now to get their skates sharpened,” said Mr. Gooley, looking at the boiled egg. “Uh-huh!” said Mrs. Hinkley. “Don't you want to go back home and help sharpen 'em? I'm goin' back and run that there store, and I'll need a clerk, I suppose.” “Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley, breaking the eggshell. The cockroach, busy with a crumb on the floor, waved his three starboard legs genially at Mr. Gooley and Mrs. Hinkley--as if, in fact, he were winking with his feet. IV.--McDermott |McDermott had gone over with a cargo of mules. The animals were disembarked at a Channel port, received by officers of that grand organization which guesses right so frequently, the Quartermaster Corps, and started in a southerly direction, in carload lots, toward the Toul sector of the Western Front. McDermott went with one of the carloads in an unofficial capacity. He had no business in the war zone. But the Quartermaster Corps, or that part of it in charge of his particular car, was in no mood to be harsh toward any one who seemed to understand the wants and humors of mules and who was willing to associate with them. And so, with his blue overalls and his red beard, McDermott went along. “I'll have a look at the war,” said McDermott, “and if I like it, I'll jine it.” “And if you don't like it,” said the teamster to whom he confided his intention, “I reckon you'll stop it?” “I dunno,” replied McDermott, “as I would be justified in stoppin' a good war. The McDermotts has niver been great hands f'r stoppin' wars. The McDermotts is always more like to be startin' wars.” McDermott got a look at the war sooner than any one, including the high command of the Entente Allies, would have thought likely--or, rather, the war got a look at McDermott. The carload of mules, separated from its right and proper train, got too far eastward at just the time the Germans got too far westward. It was in April, 1918, that, having entered Hazebrouck from the north, McDermott and his mules left it again, bound eastward. They passed through a turmoil of guns and lorries, Scotchmen and ambulances, Englishmen, tanks and ammunition wagons, Irishmen, colonials and field kitchens, all moving slowly eastward, and came to a halt at a little village where they should not have been at all, halfway between the northern rim of the forest of Nieppe and Bailleul. The mules did not stay there long. “I'll stretch me legs a bit,” said McDermott, climbing off the car and strolling toward a Grande Place surrounded by sixteenth-century architecture. And just then something passed over the Renaissance roofs with the scream of one of Dante's devils, struck McDermott's car of mules with a great noise and a burst of flame, and straightway created a situation in which there was neither car nor mules.