"Thought you might be able to do something for me," he concluded, and before he had finished speaking the man at the vice had laid down his file and was reaching down a mackintosh from its hook. Courtenay noticed a sergeant's stripes on his sleeve, and a thick and most unsoldierly crop of hair on his head plastered back from the brow.
"Why sure," the sergeant said. "If she's anyways fixable, you reckon her as fixed. Whereabouts is she ditched?"
Ten minutes later Courtenay was listening disconsolately to the list of damages discovered by the glare of an electric torch and the sergeant's searching examination.
"It'll take 'most a couple of hours to make any sort of a job," said the sergeant. "That bust up fork alone--but we'll put her to rights for you. Let's yank 'er over to the shop."
Courtenay was a good deal put out by this announcement.
"I suppose there's no help for it," he said resignedly, "but it's dashed awkward. I'm due back at the billets now really, and another two or three hours late--whew!"
"Carryin' a message, I s'pose," said the sergeant, as together they seized the cycle and pushed it towards the repair lorry.
"No," said Courtenay, "I was over seeing another officer out this way." He had an idea from the sergeant's free and easy style of address that the mackintosh, without any visible badges and with a very visible spattering of mud, had concealed the fact that he was an officer, and when he reached the light he casually opened his coat to show his belts and tunic. But the sergeant made not the slightest difference in his manner.
"Guess you'd better pull that wet coat right off," he said casually, "and set down while I get busy. You boys, pike out, hit it for the downy, an' get any sleep you all can snatch. That break-down will be ambling along in about three hours an' shoutin' for quick repairs, so you'll have to hustle some. That three hours is about all the sleep comin' to you to-night; so, beat it."
The damaged cycle was lifted into the lorry and propped up on its stand and before the men had donned their mackintoshes and "beat it," the sergeant was busy dismembering the damaged fork. Courtenay pulled off his wet coat and settled himself comfortably on a box after offering his assistance and being assured it was not required. The sergeant conversed affably as he worked.