‘What difference is there?’ said he. I couldn’t tell him, because I knew he wouldn’t understand. If it was only an old dog that you had to take to the vet’s, you’d try and not get too fond of him, but Jeremiah Donovan was not a man who would ever be in danger of that. ‘And when is this to be decided?’ I said. ‘We might hear tonight,’ he said. ‘Or tomorrow or the next day at latest. So if it’s only hanging
round that’s a trouble to you, you’ll be free soon enough.’ It was not the hanging round that was a trouble to me at all by this time. I had worse things
to worry about. When I got back to the cottage the argument was still on. Hawkins was holding forth in his best style, maintaining that there was no next world, and Noble saying that there was; but I could see that Hawkins had had the best of it. ‘Do you know what, chum?’ he was saying with a saucy smile. ‘I think you’re just as big a bleeding unbeliever as I am. You say you believe in the next world, and you know just as much about the next world as I do, which is sweet damn-all. What’s heaven? You don’t know. You know sweet damn-all! I ask you again, do they wear wings?’ ‘Very well, then,’ said Noble. ‘Tey do. Is that enough for you? Tey do wear wings.’ ‘Where do they get them then? Who makes them? Have they a factory for wings? Have they a
sort of store where you hand in your chit and take your bleeding wings?’ ‘You’re an impossible man to argue with,’ said Noble. ‘Now, listen to me’ – And they were off
again. It was long after midnight when we locked up and went to bed. As I blew out the candle I told
Noble. He took it very quietly. When we’d been in bed about an hour he asked if I thought we should tell the Englishmen. I didn’t, because I doubted if the English would shoot our men. Even if they did, the Brigade officers, who were always up and down to the Second
