lets is a delicate way of
advertisin' that there's an r in the month, an' your pork by
consequence can be relied on. My wife, too, is never happy without a
great bowlful o' vi'lets on the counter, done up in bunches: she
thinks they suit her complexion. Now this patch o' yours'd be the
very place to raise vi'lets. I was thinkin' so just now when I
measured it. Suffer much from red-spider in these parts?"

"Not so far as I know. . . . But 'tis a curious thing," went on
Nicky-Nan, "to find a man like you turned to sojerin'."

"Ah," cried Corporal Sandercock, eager for sympathy, "yes, well you
may say that! It seems like a dream. . . . Of course in the
pork-business August is always a slack month, an' this blasted War
couldn' have happened at a more convenient season for pork, not if
the Kaiser had consulted me."

"But what drove 'ee to it?"

"Into the Engineers? Well, 'tis hard to say. . . . I always had
leanin's: an' then the sausages preyed on my mind--they look so much
like fuses. So, what with one thing and another, and my wife likin'
to see me in scarlet, with piping down my legs, which is what we wear
on Sundays--'Tis a long story, however, an' we can talk it over as
we're diggin' up yer 'taties."

"'Diggin' up my 'taties'?" Nicky-Nan echoed with a quaver.
"Let me catch you tryin' it!"

"Now, we're comin' to business," said Corporal Sandercock.
"_That's_ what the O.C. told me--Captain Whybro, commandin' Number 4
Works Company, Cornwall Fortress Royal Engineers. 'Here's where we
carry our first trench,' says he; 'an' here, if wit o' man can grasp
the why or the wherefore,' says he, 'is a filthy potato-patch lyin'
slap across our line. Corporal,' says he to me, 'you're a family man
an' tactful. I detach you,' says he, 'to search the blighter out an'
request him to lift his crop without delay. If at first you don't
succeed, try, try again,' says he, 'an' the more you run around the
better it'll be for your figure, an' the more you'll thank me,' he
winds up, 'when we march together into Berlin.' So now you
understand how welcome you dropped in. . . . 'Tis a terribly hilly
country hereabouts."

"If there's law in England," Nicky-Nan threatened, "you'll keep clear
o' this here patch o' mine, or it'll be the worse for 'ee!"

Corporal Sandercock seated himself leisurably on a hillock of thyme,
began to knock out his pipe against the edge of his boot-sole, and
suddenly exploded in laughter so violent