human
I say, Bob! he exclaimed at last,
gpt
I haven’t,
human
Well, you’re not a rag and bone merchant, it’s true, but——
gpt
Considering that to-day’s the 12th, and it’s just on eleven now, it’s too late to tender, even if I wanted to.
human
Which you don’t! _My_ bright ideas are always nipped in the bud. I say, Bob, was there anything in that story we heard in our mess at Corbie—that idea of yours, you know?
gpt
Which one?
human
Well, they said you were showing off one of your inventions to a brass hat—some sort of a door-handle, I think it was—and he got fixed up in a dug-out, and you couldn’t release him for three hours or so, and he got no lunch. Everybody said it was a splendid rag.
gpt
Idiots!
human
But wasn’t it true? The story ran through the front line trenches for thirty miles or so, and bucked the men up no end.
gpt
It wasn’t a rag at all. The fact is, the staff-major was too impatient. He wouldn’t wait till I’d finished explaining the idea, and the result was what you might have expected. It was his own fault—the idea’s all right.
human
What about your gas machine, then?
gpt
Well, what about it?
human
The story that came to us was that you nearly caused a vacancy in the command of your battalion. Everybody said you were taking a short cut to getting your second pip.
gpt
Asses! growled Templeton.
human
The explanation simply is that a screw was a trifle loose——
gpt
Now nobody said that, Bob, I assure you. Everybody said you were an awfully clever chap, only——
human
I tell you a screw was a bit loose, owing to the lack of suitable appliances, and the gas came out a second or two before it ought. And the C.O. needn’t have put his nose quite so close to the machine: I didn’t ask him to!
gpt
I suppose the adjutant was too inquisitive, then. Not that time; I mean when you were trying that self-adjusting bomb of yours. The Brigade Bombing Officer was full of it, and the mess were quite jealous, because we never had such rags on our sector.
human
Rags! snorted Templeton in disgust.
gpt
I hate the word! You know perfectly well that I never rag. That self-adjusting bomb was a very serious matter.
human
Quite so. It’s only lucky it wasn’t more serious, isn’t it? We were told it cost your adjutant his left eyebrow and half a promising moustache.
gpt
Grossly exaggerated!
human
As Mark Twain said when he read the report of his own death! But what’s this, Bob?