s.

Now Mary, of course, was in the cellar with the rest, and Mary's garden
was in full view from the cellar entrance, and twenty or twenty-five
yards from it. The rest of the party were surprised to see Mary, as the
loud clatter of falling stones subsided, leap for the cellar steps, run
up them, and disappear out into the open. He was back in a couple of
minutes. "I just wondered," he said breathlessly, "if those blighters
had done any damage to my vegetables." When another shell came he
popped up again for another look, and this time he dodged back and said
many unprintable things until the next shell landed. He looked a little
relieved when he came back this time. "This one was farther away," he
said, "but that one afore dropped somebody's hearth-stone inside a
dozen paces from my onion bed." For the next half-hour the big shells
pounded the village, tearing the ruins apart, battering down the walls,
blasting huge holes in the road and between the houses, re-destroying
all that had already been destroyed, and completing the destruction of
some of the few parts that had hitherto escaped.

Between rounds Mary ran up and looked out. Once he rushed across to his
garden and came back cursing impotently, to report a shell fallen close
to the garden, his carefully erected forcing frames shattered to
splinters by the shock, and a hail of small stones and the ruins of an
iron stove dropped obliteratingly across his carrots.

"If only they'd left this crazy shooting for another week," said Mary,
"a whole lot of those things would have been ready for pulling up. The
onions is pretty near big enough to eat now, and I've half a mind to
pull some o' them before that cock-eyed Hun lands a shell in me garden
and blows it to glory."

Later he ran out, pulled an onion, a carrot, and a lettuce, brought
them back to the cellar, proudly passed them round, and anxiously
demanded an opinion as to whether they were ready for pulling, and
counsel as to whether he ought to strip his garden.

"Now look here!" said the sergeant at last; "you let your bloomin'
garden alone; I'm not going to have you running out there plucking
carrot and onion nosegays under fire. If a shell blows your garden
half-way through to Australia, I can't help it, and neither can you.
I'll be quite happy to split a dish of spuds with you if so be your
garden offers them up; but I'm not going to have you casualtied
rescuing your perishing radishes under fire. Nothing