In due course my turn arrived, and the battalion marched
away leaving me to the quiet of farmyard.
Having heaped up the straw, our bedding, in one corner of the barn,
swept the concrete floor, rolled the blankets, explained to the
gossipy farm servant that I did not "compree" her gibberish, and (p. 037)
watched her waddle across the midden towards the house, my duties were
ended. I was at liberty until the return of the battalion. It was all
very quiet, little was to be heard save the gnawing of the rats in the
corner of the barn and the muffled booming of guns from "out
there"--"out there" is the oft repeated phrase that denotes the
locality of the firing line.
There was sunlight and shade in the farmyard, the sun lit up the pump
on the top of which a little bird with salmon-pink breast,
white-tipped tail, and crimson head preened its feathers; in the shade
where our barn and the stables form an angle an old lady in snowy
sunbonnet and striped apron was sitting knitting. It was good to be
there lying prone upon the barn straw near the door above the crazy
ladder, writing letters. I had learned to love this place and these
people whom I seem to know so very well from having read Rene Bazin,
Daudet, Maupassant, Balzac and Marie Claire. High up and far away to
the west a Zeppelin was to be seen travelling in a westerly direction;
the farmer's wife, our landlady, had just rescued a tin of bully beef
from one of her all-devouring pigs; at the barn door lay my recently
cleaned rifle and ordered equipment--how incongruous it all was (p.
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