The Happy Warrior

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

"Oh, five years!—Five years!" Percival cried when he read the news. "Poor, poor old Hunt! Five years!"

He was sitting comfortably propped in a big chair in the garden behind "Post Offic," Aunt Maggie and Ima with him, and his weakness could not restrain the moisture that came to his eyes. "Five years, Aunt Maggie! He was one of my friends. I liked him—always liked him. He was always fond of me—jolly good to me. When I think of him with his vegules and his sick yedaches! Five years—poor old Hunt!"

He was very visibly distressed. "Everybody is fond of you, dear," Aunt Maggie said sympathetically.

"That's just it!" he said—"that's just it!" and he threw himself back in his chair and went into thoughts that were come upon him and that her words exactly suited: thoughts that were often his in the days of his sickness when he lay—was it waking or sleeping? he never quite knew. They presented the cheery group of all his friends, all so jolly, jolly good to him. Himself in their midst and they all smiling at him and stretching jolly hands. But a gap in the circle—Mr. Amber's place. Another gap now—Hunt. It appeared to him in those feverish hours—and now again with new reason and new force—that outside that jolly circle of friends there prowled, as a savage beast about a camp-fire, some dark and evil menace that reached cruel hands to snatch a member to itself and through the gap threatened him. Within the circle the happy, happy time; beyond it some other thing. Life was not always youth, then? not always ardour of doing, fighting, laughing, loving? Menace lurked beyond.... What?...

But those thoughts were swept away, and fate of poor old Hunt that had caused them temporarily forgotten, by footsteps that brought up the path three figures, of whom two were colossal of girth and bright red of face—one striking at his thigh as if his hand held an imaginary stick—and one that walked behind them lean and brown, with rare bright eyes in a face of many little lines.

"Why, Mr. Hannaford! Mr. Hannaford!" Percival cried delightedly. "Stingo! Good old Japhra!—you've actually brought them!"

They were actually brought; but in the alarming company of women folk—of Aunt Maggie, of Ima, and of Honor, who now, the visit having been expected, came out with a laden tea-table—the tremendous brothers exhibited themselves in a state of embarrassment that appeared to make it highly improbable that they would remain. First having shaken hands all round the circle, colliding heavily with one another before each, Mr. Hannaford declaring to each in turn "Warm—warm—bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't!" and Stingo repeating some husky throatings of identical sound but no articulation; they then shook hands with one another; then proceeded round the circle again; simultaneously appeared to discover their mistake; collided with shocking violence; and finally relapsed into enormous nose-blowings, trumpeting one against the other, as it seemed, into handkerchiefs of the size of small towels.

It was to abate this tremendous clamour that Aunt Maggie handed a cup of tea to Mr. Hannaford, and it was without the remotest desire in the world to have it there that Mr. Hannaford in some extraordinary way found it on the side of his right hand and proceeded to go through an involved series of really admirable juggling feats with it, beginning with the cup and saucer and ending with the spoon alone, that came to a grand finale in cup, saucer and spoon shooting separately and at tolerable intervals in three different and considerable directions. It was to cover the amazement of the tremendous brothers at this extraordinary incident that Ima handed a piece of cake to Stingo, and it was the fact that Stingo had no sooner conveyed it to his mouth than he abandoned himself to a paroxysm of choking and for his relief was followed about the garden by Mr. Hannaford with positively stunning blows on the back that sent Percival at last from agonies of hopeless giggling to peals of laughter which established every one at their ease.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" from Percival. "I'm awfully sorry—I can't help it. Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Impossible to resist it: "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!" thundered Mr. Hannaford.