Bourne looked at it with a sardonic grin.

‘You’re a bit of an artist with the paint-brush, Hemmings,’ he said, to cover up his thought.

‘Well, I take a bit o’ pride in me work. It don’t last, o’ course, the paint’s poor stuff, and that wood’s too soft; but you might just as well try to make a good job of it.’

‘What about going down to the transport-lines?’ asked Johnson.

‘I’m ready, Corporal,’ said Bourne, and they left Hemmings to his work.

‘Not very cheerful, sitting there with a lot of wooden crosses,’ said Johnson, as they turned into the street.

‘Why not?’ Bourne asked him callously. ‘Would you like stone ones any better?’

‘As soon as we see the quartermaster, we shall be able to look for our billets,’ said Johnson, not wishing to pursue the subject. ‘Then we can dump our packs and look round the town. He won’t want me until the morning.’

‘I hope we find some place where we can get a decent drink,’ said Bourne. ‘Why don’t we get a rum issue every night, or a bottle of beer with dinner? The French get their wine. Did you see that shop as we came through Mazingarbe, with bottles of Clicquot and Perrier Jouet in the window, and a label on them, Réservée pour les officiers? Bloody cheek. Half of them don’t know whether they are drinking champagne or cider. And we have to be content with that filthy stuff they sell us in the estaminets.’

‘I don’t know anything about wine,’ said Johnson primly. ‘Sometimes when I took my girl out in Blighty we would go into a hotel, a respectable house, you know, and have a glass of port wine and a biscuit. And port wine and brandy is good for colic, it’s binding. I’ve got a photo of my girl in my pocket-book. Here it is. It’s only a snap, of course, not very good; and the sun was in her eyes. Do you think she’s nice looking?’

‘Awfully pretty,’ said Bourne, who could be a fluent liar on occasion. He really thought that she looked rather binding, too; but they were turning into the transport-lines, and Johnson buttoned the photograph into his pocket again. The quartermaster was not there, nor was the transport officer, so they inspected the houses, and Bourne stroked the nose of the old grey mare, who drew the Maltese cart for the officers’ mess. His conscience was a little sensitive on her account. The officers’ mess-cart generally preceded the Lewis gun cart which Bourne helped to pull on the march; and whenever they came to a hill, if the officer were preoccupied with other matters, Bourne would hitch his rope to the mess-cart and leave it to the mare. She bore no malice, the old lady, as though she knew we had a pretty thin time. The mules did not move him to any sentiment; to him they seemed symbolical of modern war, grotesque, stubborn, vindictive animals. There was nothing for it but to trudge back to the quartermaster’s stores again; and they found him this time. He talked to the lance-corporal and gave them a chit for the Town-major, so they went off to look for him; he was out too, but a corporal in the office took matters into his own hands, and showed them to some billets in a back street, on the way to get his own tea. They would have to go to the Town-major’s office again, to make sure that it was all right. A thin woman of about forty, with a long-suffering expression on her face, was the only occupant of the house; and she left her work in the kitchen to show them into an empty room. Bourne noticed that the floor-boards were clean.