H.E. shell—after Noircourt, which had knocked out Tietjens himself—had brought them on, violent. There was also, he finished, the gentility to be considered. Tietjens said:
"Oh, the gentility! . . . That's not worth a flea's jump. . . . There won't be any more parades after this war. There aren't any now. Look at who your companions will be in an officer's quarters; you'd be in a great deal better society in any self-respecting sergeants' mess." Cowley answered that he knew the service had gone to the dogs. All the same his missis liked it. And there was his daughter Winnie to be considered. She had always been a bit wild, and his missis wrote that she had gone wilder than ever, all due to the war. Cowley thought that the bad boys would be a little more careful how they monkeyed with her if she was an officer's daughter. . . . There was probably something in that!
Coming out into the open, confidentially with Tietjens, Cowley dropped his voice huskily to say:
"Take Quartermaster-Sergeant Morgan for R.S.M., sir."
Tietjens said explosively:
"I'm damned if I will." Then he asked: "Why?" The wisdom of an old N.C.O.'s is a thing no prudent officer neglects.
"He can do the work, sir," Cowley said. "He"s out for a commission, and he'll do his best. . . ." He dropped his husky voice to a still greater depth of mystery:
"You"re over two hundred—I should say nearer three hundred—pounds down in your battalion stores. I don't suppose you want to lose a sum of money like that?"
