“The army, the army, the democratic army,” chanted someone under his breath.
“But, begorry, I want to go overseas and 'ave a look at the 'uns,” said Flannagan, who managed with strange skill to combine a cockney whine with his Irish brogue.
“Overseas?” took up the lanky man. “If I could have gone an' studied overseas, I'd be making as much as Kubelik. I had the makings of a good player in me.”
“Why don't you go?” asked Andrews, who stood on the outskirts with Fuselli and Chris.
“Look at me... t. b.,” said the lanky man.
“Well, they can't get me over there soon enough,” said Flannagan.
“Must be funny not bein' able to understand what folks say. They say 'we' over there when they mean 'yes,' a guy told me.”
“Ye can make signs to them, can't ye?” said Flannagan “an' they can understand an Irishman anywhere. But ye won't 'ave to talk to the 'uns. Begorry I'll set up in business when I get there, what d'ye think of that?”
Everybody laughed.
“How'd that do? I'll start an Irish House in Berlin, I will, and there'll be O'Casey and O'Ryan and O'Reilly and O'Flarrety, and begod the King of England himself'll come an' set the goddam Kaiser up to a drink.”
“The Kaiser'll be strung up on a telephone pole by that time; ye needn't worry, Flannagan.”
“They ought to torture him to death, like they do niggers when they lynch 'em down south.”
A bugle sounded far away outside on the parade ground. Everyone slunk away silently to his cot.
John Andrews arranged himself carefully in his blankets, promising himself a quiet time of thought before going to sleep. He needed to be awake and think at night this way, so that he might not lose entirely the thread of his own life, of the life he would take up again some day if he lived through it. He brushed away the thought of death. It was uninteresting. He didn't care anyway. But some day he would want to play the piano again,
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