"Jim has got a commission," said the landlord, and he said it in a tone
that left no doubt that now things would begin to move. For Jim is his son,
a sergeant-major in the artillery, who has been out at the front ever since
Mons.
The news has created quite a sensation. But we are getting so used to
sensations now that we are becoming _blase_. There has never been such a
year of wonders in the memory of any one living. The other day thousands of
soldiers from the great camp ten miles away descended on our "terrain"--I
think that's the word--and had a tremendous two-days' battle in the hills
about us. They broke through the hedges, and slept in the cornfields, and
ravished the apple-trees in my orchard, and raided the cottagers for tea,
and tramped to and fro in our street and gave us the time of our lives.
"_I_ never seed such a sight in _my_ life," said old Benjamin to me in the
evening. "Man and boy, I've lived in that there bungalow for eighty-five
year come Michaelmas, and _I_ never seed the like o' _this_ before.
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