n.

"Oh! learn to stab people, and kick them in the tummy; and all sorts of
little parlour tricks like that."

"You dreadful man! I don't believe you're a bit bloodthirsty really."
She shook a reproving finger at him and laughed. "But I shan't mind a
bit if you kill a lot of those nasty Germans."

She drifted away, and the man in mufti sat down again. "The last time
I saw her she had a concert for the wounded at her house. A slightly
bow-legged woman of great bulk was singing about her soldier lover, who
saved her icckle bruvver. My hostess cried--she's that type. Only a
little of course; but one tear somehow arrived."

The soldier laughed. "There are a few like that; thank heaven! not
many. They've learned, Dick; they're learning every day."

"Up to a point. I am learning to stab people; a thing which, when you
actually come down to it, is beyond her comprehension. She vaguely
knows that that is a soldier's job--or one of them; but it means
nothing to her. And I don't know that it means very much more to me."

"You'll find it will, my dear fellow, when the moment comes, and you've
got your rag out and are seeing red. Let's go."

The two men got up; waiters hastened forward; and in a few moments
their table was empty. For a brief space the curtain of imagination
had been lifted; the drama of grim stark death had flashed into a
setting of luxury and life. . . .

And with the rise of the curtain Jimmy O'Shea had stepped on to the
boards; for no man who knew him could ever hear the word bayonet
without recalling him, if only for a second.

He was a mixture was Jimmy--one of those strange jumbles of character
in which no country is more rich than Ireland. He would not take a
commission, though times and again he was offered one by his Colonel.

"I can teach the boys more as a sergeant, sir," he would answer; "teach
them better how to score the points that win."

"You bloodthirsty ruffian," laughed the Colonel. "Your old doctrine, I
suppose, of close-quarter work."

"You have it, sir," answered O'Shea quietly. "Every dead German is one
point up to us; every dead Englishman is a point down. I am teaching
the boys how to kill, and not be killed themselves."

"But what the devil do you suppose they have been taught?" The C.O.
would lean back and light a cigarette. "To sit and pick buttercups,
and ask the Huns to shoot 'em?"

"Shooting, is it?" Jimmy's tone expressed immeasurable scorn. "The