Page:Lieutenant and Others (1915) by Sapper.djvu/149

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EBENEEZER THE GOAT

NO GOAT BY ANY OTHER NAME E’ER SMELT AS MUCH

Driver Robert Brown, as I have already remarked, was an admirable man in many ways. And I have frequently observed to other members of the mess, that one of the things that most endeared him to me was his love of animals.

Brown was not a beauty, I admit: his face was of the general-utility order, and he had a partiality for singing a dreadful song of which he only knew one line—at least that is all we ever heard, thank Heaven! At cockcrow, ’neath the midday sun, at eventide, did he foist upon a long-suffering world, with a powerful and somewhat flat voice, the following despairing wail: “What a faice, what a faice, what a norrible faice, lumme, what a faice she ’ad.” Occasional streams of invective issued from neighbouring dug-outs. The result was immaterial;

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