“No war yet!” he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes.

“Oh, we’d have called you if there were!” said the manufacturer’s son, trying to make a joke, which was hard work with his clothes dew-soaked after a sleepless night in the open.

“Wouldn’t want you to miss it after coming so far,” added the laborer’s son, aiming to show that he, too, was in a light-hearted mood.

“And how did you sleep?” asked Eugene, cheerily, of his neighbors.

“Fine!”

“First rate!”

“Like a stone!”

Every man was too intent in forcing his own spontaneity to notice that that of the others was also forced.

“Like a top!” chimed in pasty-faced Peterkin, the valet’s son, to be in fashion.

“I didn’t sleep much myself; in fact, not at all,” said Hugo Mallin.

“Oh, ho!” groaned Pilzer, the butcher’s son, with a broad grin that made a crease in the liver patch on his cheek.

“You see, it’s a new experience for me,” Hugo explained in a drawl, his face drawn as a mask.  “I’m not so used to war as you other fellows are.  I’m not so brave!”

There was a forced laugh because Hugo appeared droll, and when he appeared droll it was the proper thing to laugh.  Besides, in the best humor there is a grain of truth, whether you see it or not.  This time a number saw it quite clearly.

“I was thinking how ridiculous we all are,” Hugo went on without change of tone or expression, “grovelling here on our stomachs and pretending that we slept when we didn’t and that we want to be killed when we don’t!”

“White feather again!” Pilzer exclaimed.

“Oh, shut up!” snapped the doctor’s son irritably.  “Let Hugo talk.  He’s only gassing.  It’s so monotonous lying here that any kind of nonsense is better than growling.”

“Yes, yes!” the others agreed.

Hugo’s outburst of the previous evening was forgotten.  They welcomed anything that broke the suspense.  Let the regimental wag make a little fun any way that he could.  As the officers had withdrawn somewhat to the rear for breakfast, there was no constraint.

“I was thinking how I’d like to go out and shake hands with the Browns,” said Hugo.  “That’s the way fencers and pugilists do before they set to.  It seems polite and sportsmanlike, indicating that there’s no prejudice.”

There was a ripple of half-hearted merriment punctuated by exclamations.

“What a fool idea!”

“How do all your notions get into your head, Hugo?”

“Sometimes by squinting at the moonlight and counting odd numbers; sometimes by knowing that anything that’s different is ridiculous; and sometimes by looking for tangent truths out of professorial ruts,” Hugo observed with a sort of erudite discursiveness which was the rank dissimulation of a hypocrite to Pilzer and wholly confusing to Peterkin, not to say a draught on mental effort for many of the others.