"I didn't sleep much myself; in fact, not at all," said Hugo Mallin. "Oh, ho!" groaned Pilzer, the butcher's son, with a broad grin that made a crease in the liver patch on his cheek. "You see, it's a new experience for me," Hugo explained in a drawl, his face drawn as a mask. "I'm not so used to war as you other fellows are. I'm not so brave!" There was a forced laugh because Hugo appeared droll, and when he appeared droll it was the proper thing to laugh. Besides, in the best humor there is a grain of truth, whether you see it or not. This time a number saw it quite clearly. "I was thinking how ridiculous we all are," Hugo went on without change of tone or expression, "grovelling here on our stomachs and pretending that we slept when we didn't and that we want to be killed when we don't!" "White feather again!" Pilzer exclaimed. "Oh, shut up!" snapped the doctor's son irritably. "Let Hugo talk. He's only gassing. It's so monotonous lying here that any kind of nonsense is better than growling." "Yes, yes!" the others agreed. Hugo's outburst of the previous evening was forgotten. They welcomed anything that broke the suspense. Let the regimental wag make a little fun any way that he could. As the officers had withdrawn somewhat to the rear for breakfast, there was no constraint. "I was thinking how I'd like to go out and shake hands with the Browns," said Hugo. "That's the way fencers and pugilists do before they set to. It seems polite and sportsmanlike, indicating that there's no prejudice." There was a ripple of half-hearted merriment punctuated by exclamations. "What a fool idea!" "How do all your notions get into your head, Hugo?" "Sometimes by squinting at the moonlight and counting odd numbers; sometimes by knowing that anything that's different is ridiculous; and sometimes by looking for tangent truths out of professorial ruts," Hugo observed with a sort of erudite discursiveness which was the rank dissimulation of a hypocrite to Pilzer and wholly confusing to Peterkin, not to say a draught on mental effort for many of the others. "For instance, I got a good one from two fellows of the Browns whom I met on the road the first day we arrived. They were reservists. We were soon talking together and so peaceably that I was sceptical if they were Browns at all. So I determined on a test. I told them I was from a distant province and hadn't travelled much and wouldn't they please take off their hats. They consented very good-naturedly." "Oh, good old Hugo! He got one on the Browns!" "I'd like to have been there to see it!" "And when they took off their hats, what then?" "Why, I said: 'This isn't convincing at all.'" Hugo's drawl paused for a second while interest developed. "'You haven't any horns! Haven't you any forked tails, either? Or are they curled up nicely inside your trousers' legs?'" "Whew! But they must have felt cheap to have been got in that way!" "And old Hugo looking so solemn!" "Just like he does now!"