Desultory conversation enlivened those
corners where the denizens of the hut were energetic enough to polish
their boots or sew on buttons. The one or two men who happened to be
"going out on pass"--we were allowed one afternoon per week--were
putting on their puttees and brushing-up the metal buttons of their
walking-out tunics (otherwise known as their Square Push Suits). The
buttons of their working tunics had of course been burnished before
parade. The correct employment of button-sticks and of the magic cleaner
called Soldier's Friend; the polishing of one's out-of-use boots and
their placing, on the floor, with tied laces, and with their toes in
line with the bed's legs; the substitution of lost braces' buttons by
"bulldogs"; the furbishing of one's belt; the propping-up of the front
of one's cap with wads of paper in the interior of the crown; the
devices whereby non-spiral puttees can be coaxed into a resemblance of
spiral ones and caused to ascend in corkscrews above trousers which
refuse to tuck unlumpily into one's socks--these, and a host of other
matters, always kept a proportion of the hut-dwellers awake and busy and
loquacious even in the somnolent post-prandial half-hour before 2
o'clock.
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