The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps | Page 8

have to pay the great price, many of 'em," he sighed, "before the Hun is brought to his knees. But it's a fine thing to be a boy." The colonel rose stiffly and sighed. "I would give a lot to be in their shoes, with all the hardship and horror that may lie in front of them if this war keeps on long enough," he mused to himself. "It's a fine thing to be a boy."
Out went the eight Brighton boys to the sergeant-major, their work begun. They too felt it a fine thing to be boys, though their feeling was just unconscious, natural, effervescent---the sparkle of the real wine of youth and health and clean, brave spirit.

CHAPTER II
FIRST STEPS
A month after the Brighton boys had commenced their duties at the airdrome at the old Frisbie place, they would have been missed by more than one person about the camp if they had failed to put in an appearance some morning. It was astonishing to see how much routine work could pile up around the headquarters' offices.
The machines arrived in some numbers. One by one they were unpacked from their great crates and set up, then wheeled into their respective places in the broad hangars which had been built to house them.
The first one of the Brighton boys to settle himself into a regular billet was Fat Benson. He had been watching the uncrating of box of spare engine parts one afternoon when no specific job claimed him for the moment, and fell into conversation with the short, stocky sergeant who was to be the store keeper. The sergeant was tired and worried.
He had counted a consignment of sparking plugs twice and obtained a different total each time. Worse, neither of his totals tallied with the figures on the consignment sheet. He was fast losing his temper.
Fat was of most placid, unruffled temperament. He saw that trouble was toward, and was about to walk away and avoid proximity to the coming storm when he thought: "This may be a chance to help." He turned and said to the sergeant: "If you like, I will count those plugs for you while you sort out the spanners from the other crate."
"Good boy!" at once said the sergeant. "I have got to a point where those little red pasteboard boxes sort of run together, and I couldn't count them correctly to save my life. If you can make them come out to suit this consignment number they have sent with the plugs you will be a real help, I can tell you."
Henry set to work with a will, and not only checked the number of spark plugs, which he found to be correct, but at the sergeant's direction began placing them in neat piles on the shelf of the store-room that had been set aside for plugs of that type. He was in the middle of this task when who should come by but the sergeant-major!
"Hello!" exclaimed that worthy, who was nothing if not a martinet, "who told you to be puttering about here?"
Before Fat could answer, the stores sergeant spoke up. "This man is giving me a hand, and I need it," he said. "If you don't need him for something else to-day I wish you would let him stay with me. I am supposed to have a couple of soldiers detailed for this job, but I haven't seen anything of them yet. Why can't I have this man?"
Fat seemed to grow bigger than ever round the chest as he heard himself referred to as "this man." That was getting on, sure enough. More, he was mightily pleased that someone really wanted him.
"I guess you can have him if you want him," answered the sergeant-major. "Have you anything else to do to-day, Benson?"
"Not that I know about," was Fat's reply.
"Stay here, then, until the sergeant is through with you."
That night the stores sergeant suggested that Fat come to him next day. The stores were just starting, and the work of setting things in their proper places was far from uninteresting. The boy took a real delight in his new task; and when, three days later, the sergeant-major called into the stores on his way past and said to the stores sergeant, "Are you going to keep Benson here for good?" the stores sergeant replied without hesitation, "I sure am."
To have been among the stores from the time they were first unpacked, and to have assisted in the work of first placing them where they belonged, gave Fat a sort of sense of proprietorship. Stores still poured in every day or so. The two soldiers who were to help at last made their appearance, but neither of them seemed to particularly appeal to the stores sergeant, who was by that time depending more