But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still standing in the mud.  The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy.  They had the weary humility of the figures in Millet’s “Angelus,” without their inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair.

XXI

A “DUG-OUT"[24]

Driver George Hawkins, of the ——­th Battery (K), was engaged in drying one of the leaders of the gun team.  The leader, who answered, when he felt so inclined, to the name of “Tommy,” had been exercised that morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences.  He performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a sibilant hiss.  Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a utilitarian origin:  it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering the lungs.  But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism, and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man.  Had Hawkins not been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy’s fetlocks he would have observed that his charge had suddenly laid his ears back.  But being something of a chiropodist he was studying the way Tommy put his foot to the ground, for he suspected corns.  The next moment Driver Hawkins found himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite side of the stable.  Tommy had suddenly lashed out, and landed him one on the left shoulder.  Driver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved than hurt.  He looked at Tommy with pained surprise.

“I feeds yer,” he said reproachfully, “I waters yer, I grooms yer, I stays from my dinner to dry yer, and what do I get for it?  Now I ask yer?” Tommy was looking round at him with eyes of guileless innocence.

“What do I get for it?” he repeated argumentatively.  “I gets a blooming kick.”

“Blooming” is a euphemism.  The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive functions, and cannot be set down here.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Hawkins, saluting, as he caught sight of the Major and myself who had entered the stable at that moment.  The Major was trying hard to repress a smile.  “Go on with your catechism, Hawkins,” he said.  It was evident that Hawkins belonged to the Moral Education League, and believed in suasion rather than punishment for the repression of vice.

“I suppose you’re fond of your horses, Hawkins?” I said unguardedly.  But no R.F.A. driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins’s reply was disconcerting.  “I ’ates ’em, sir,” he whispered to me as the Major turned his back; “I’m a maid-of-all-work to them ’orses.  They gives me ’ousemaid’s knee, and my back do ache something cruel.”