Snoggers laughed boisterously, Bubb chuckled and a lazy smile spread over Bowdy's face. The gestures of the excited Irishman amused them. He sat down, took a deep breath, then went on to speak in a calmer voice. "Love sweetens life," he said. "It is like sugar in children's physic. Here, Spudhole, were you ever in love?" "Blimey, not arf," Spudhole answered and winked. "I'm not arf a beggar wiv the birds. I'm...." "That wench down at the farm, that girl Fifi is a nice snug parcel o' love," Snoggers interrupted, "I 'aven't arf got my 'and in down that quarter. Wot d'ye fink o' 'er, Fitz?" "Who?" asked Fitzgerald. He had become suddenly alert. "'Ear 'im," said Bubb, winking at the Sergeant. "Old Fitz ain't arf a dodger; one o' the nuts that's wot 'e is." "Fifi, the girl at the farm," said Snogger in answer to Fitzgerald's question. "Yer don't say much when you're down there and 'er in the room but your eyes are never off 'er.... I wouldn't say nothin' against rollin' 'er in the straw.... This mornin' ... a funny thing ... she came up to me and told me to put my 'and in 'ers. I obliged 'er. Then she said to me: 'Two sous for your thoughts.' I didn't tell 'er wot I was finkin' of, but I didn't arf fink." Snogger laughed loudly; Fitzgerald was silent. "Bet yer, yer wos finkin' somefing wot wasn't good, sarg," said Bubb. "Aye; and old Fitz is gwine dotty on the wench," said the sergeant. "I see it in his eyes." "Botheration," Fitzgerald remarked. "I know the girl by sight and I know she makes good café-au-lait, but I didn't even know her name until now." "Sing a song, Fitz," Bubb called out. "A good rousin' song wiv 'air on't." "I pay no heed to that creation, his tap-room wit and yokel humour," muttered Fitzgerald, turning to Benners. "But if you desire it...." "Give us a bit o' a song, Fitz," Benners replied. "Give me a cigarette and I'll sing you a song that I love very much," Fitzgerald said. "It was sung in Ireland by the old women in the famine times when they were dying of starvation. You must picture the famine-stricken leaning over their turf fires and singing their songs of desolation. (God! I think it was the turf-fires that kept the race alive.)" CHAPTER II THE LONE ROAD "I want to go 'ome, I want to go 'ome, I don't want to go to the trenches no more, Where the bullets and shrapnel do whistle and roar, I want to go over the sea, Where the Alley man can't get at me; Oh, my! I don't want to die, I want to go 'ome!" (_A Trench Song._)