When it let go, we went on talking again, if nobody hurt--maybe saying, 'That was a ripper!' or some such commonplace comment before we resumed; or, maybe, we would see a shell poising itself away high in the air overhead.
In that case, every fellow just whipped out a sudden, 'See you again, gents!' and shoved.

Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promenading the streets, looking as cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up watching the shells; and I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain about what a shell was going to do, and wait and make certain; and after that they sa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, according to the verdict.

Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of paper, and odds and ends of one sort or another lying around.

Ours hadn't; they had IRON litter.

Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragments and unbursted shells in his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of monument in his front yard--a ton of it, sometimes.