'I suppose YOU don't care if the enemy gets into Maidstone or not!' exclaimed Oswald bitterly. 'If I were a soldier I'd rather die than be beaten.'
The soldier saluted. 'Good old patriotic sentiment' he said, smiling at the heart-felt boy.
But Oswald could bear no more. 'Which is the Colonel?' he asked.
'Over there--near the grey horse.'
'The one lighting a cigarette?' H. O. asked.
'Yes--but I say, kiddie, he won't stand any jaw. There's not an ounce of vice about him, but he's peppery. He might kick out.
You'd better bunk.'
'Better what?' asked H. O.
'Bunk, bottle, scoot, skip, vanish, exit,' said the soldier.
'That's what you'd do when the fighting begins,' said H. O. He is often rude like that--but it was what we all thought, all the same.
The soldier only laughed.
A spirited but hasty altercation among ourselves in whispers ended in our allowing Alice to be the one to speak to the Colonel. It was she who wanted to. 'However peppery he is he won't kick a girl,' she said, and perhaps this was true.
But of course we all went with her. So there were six of us to stand in front of the Colonel. And as we went along we agreed that we would salute him on the word three. So when we got near, Dick said, 'One, two, three', and we all saluted very well--except H.
O., who chose that minute to trip over a rifle a soldier had left lying about, and was only saved from falling by a man in a cocked hat who caught him deftly by the back of his jacket and stood him on his legs.
'Let go, can't you,' said H. O. 'Are you the General?'
Before the Cocked Hat had time to frame a reply, Alice spoke to the Colonel. I knew what she meant to say, because she had told me as we threaded our way among the resting soldiery. What she really said was--'Oh, how CAN you!'
'How can I WHAT?' said the Colonel, rather crossly.
'Why, SMOKE?' said Alice.
'My good children, if you're an infant Band of Hope, let me recommend you to play in some other backyard,' said the Cock-Hatted Man.
H. O. said, 'Band of Hope yourself'--but no one noticed it.
'We're NOT a Band of Hope,' said Noel. 'We're British, and the man over there told us you are. And Maidstone's in danger, and the enemy not a mile off, and you stand SMOKING.' Noel was standing crying, himself, or something very like it.
'It's quite true,' Alice said.
The Colonel said, 'Fiddle-de-dee.'
But the Cocked-Hatted Man said, 'What was the enemy like?'
We told him exactly. And even the Colonel then owned there might be something in it.
'Can you show me the place where they are on the map?' he asked.
'Not on the map, we can't,' said Dicky--'at least, I don't think so, but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an hour.'
The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the Colonel, who returned his scrutiny, then he shrugged his shoulders.
'Well, we've got to do something,' he said, as if to himself.
'Lead on, Macduff.'
The Colonel roused his soldiery from their stupor of pipes by words of command which the present author is sorry he can't remember.
Then he bade us boys lead the way. I tell you it felt fine, marching at the head of a regiment. Alice got a lift on the Cocked-Hatted One's horse. It was a red-roan steed of might, exactly as if it had been in a ballad. They call a grey-roan a 'blue' in South Africa, the Cocked-Hatted One said.
We led the British Army by unfrequented lanes till we got to the gate of Sugden's Waste Wake pasture. Then the Colonel called a whispered halt, and choosing two of us to guide him, the dauntless and discerning commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are reconnoitring, or anxious to escape detection for whatever reason.
Our Colonel's orderly crackled most. If you're not near enough to tell a colonel by the crown and stars on his shoulder-strap, you can tell him by the orderly behind him, like 'follow my leader'.
'Look out!' said Oswald in a low but commanding whisper, 'the camp's down in that field. You can see if you take a squint through this gap.'
The speaker took a squint himself as he spoke, and drew back, baffled beyond the power of speech. While he was struggling with his baffledness the British Colonel had his squint. He also drew back, and said a word that he must have known was not right--at least when he was a boy.
'I don't care,' said Oswald, 'they were there this morning. White tents like mushrooms, and an enemy cleaning a cauldron.'
'With sand,' said Dicky.
'That's most convincing,' said the Colonel, and I did not like the way he said it.
'I say,' Oswald said, 'let's get to the top corner of the ambush--the wood, I mean. You can see the crossroads from there.'
We did, and quickly, for the crackling of branches no longer dismayed our almost despairing spirits.
We came to the edge of the wood, and Oswald's patriotic heart really did give a jump, and he cried, 'There they are, on the Dover Road.'
Our miscellaneous signboard had done its work.
'By Jove, young un, you're right! And in quarter column, too!
We've got em on toast--on toast--egad!' I never heard anyone not in a book say 'egad' before, so I saw something really out of the way was indeed up.
The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he said he must rejoin the main body at once.
We found the main body very friendly with Noel and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life.
'I think he's a general in disguise,' Noel said. 'He's been giving us chocolate out of a pocket in his saddle.'
Oswald thought about the roast rabbit then--and he is not ashamed to own it--yet he did not say a word. But Alice is really not a bad sort. She had saved two bars of chocolate for him and Dicky.
Even in war girls can sometimes be useful in their humble way.
