"This is a free country," retorted Stoneway. "And as to you, you’re a turncoat. Weren’t you always spouting against the war? Didn’t I back you up? Who caved in as meek as a lamb?" "Well, you followed along with the other sheep, didn’t you? What you joined for goodness only knows. You’re always grousing about something or other. Bacon’s too fat, then it’s too lean; cheese is dry, then it’s damp; you pick out little bits of lead out of the pear gravy, and spread ’em round your plate and put on a face like a holy martyr. You sit at lecture with a snigger on your ugly mug; the pianner’s out of tune; nobody can sing for nuts; _you_ take jolly good care you don’t do nothing to amuse the company. Nothing’s right; you always know better ’n anyone else; lummy, I believe you think you ought to be capting, if not commander-in-chief. What did you join for, that’s what I want to know. I tell you straight, we’ve had enough of your grousing. Why don’t you take your grumbles to the officers? ’Any complaints?’ says they when they come round inspecting; why don’t you speak up like a man? No fear; you ain’t got a word to say. All you can do is to growl when they ain’t by, and try to make yourself big before all the dirty swipes of the regiment. Why, look at the other night, when they gave the alarm, and we was all confined to barricks: what did you do then? When all those nice young ladies came with their fiddles and things and sang and played to us proper, gave us fags all round, too, you must get up in a corner with your dirty lot and make such a deuce of a row we couldn’t hear a word of ’Dolly Grey’--my favourite song, too! If I’d been colonel I’d have given you a good dose of clink straight away, and so now you know it." Ginger had fairly let himself go, and the applause that followed his speech showed that he voiced the opinion of the majority. Stoneway made no reply, but gradually edged away. This was the culmination of an estrangement which had been developing between the two men ever since the company was formed. Whatever had brought them together previously, their enlistment had sundered them completely. Ginger, whose backing Stoneway had been wont to count on in any attack on authority, was now the most orderly as well as the cheeriest man in the company. He passed off with a jest every hardship of that trying winter. "Think of those poor chaps in the trenches," he would say, if someone complained of the cold or a wetting. Stoneway clearly resented his change of spirit, though it was a puzzle to the better disposed among the men why he could have expected a display of insubordination from these enthusiastic recruits in the New Army.