"There was never a man in this world," sighed Mrs Penhaligon as she regained her own kitchen, "but hisself came afore all the world." She arrested her hand on the cover of the flour-barrel.
"He talked so confident of his money, too. . . . Funny thing if Nicky-Nan, that we've been pityin' all this time, should turn out to be a miser!"
An hour later, in the full light of the afternoon sunshine, Nicky-Nan emerged from the old house with a shovel on his arm and a bundle dangling from it. He had heard 'Bert Penhaligon say that the Boy Scouts were employed by night only for coast-watching. By day the pilots with their telescopes habitually commanded this whole stretch of coast, nor could the periscope of a submarine push itself above the inshore water and not be detected.
At the corner of the Warren, where the cliff turns eastwardly with a sharp bend, Nicky-Nan almost ran into Policeman Rat-it-all, who pulled himself up for a chat as usual.
"I don't know what you think," observed the Policeman, "but to my mind this here War gives us a great sense o' brotherhood. I read that on the newspaper this mornin', and it struck me as one o' the aptest things I'd seen for a long while."
"You said something o' the sort last time we met," answered
Nicky-Nan.
"You're wrong there." Rat-it-all seemed to be slightly hurt in his feelings; "because I read it on the paper only this morning. 'Against War in the abstrac' much may be urged,' it said. 'But 'oo will deny as it begets a sense o' Brotherhood if it does nothin' else?' That was the expression."
"I don't take much truck in this War, for my part," said Nicky-Nan, quartering on the narrow footpath to let Rat-it-all pass: "but it'll do a dam sight else afore we're through with it, if you want my opinion."
"To a man in the Force," said Rat-it-all pensively, "an expression like that, mixed up with photographs in the 'Daily Mirror,' strikes HOME. A man in the Force, as I'll put it, is in some ways unlike other men." He paused to let this sink in.
"Take your time," said Nicky-Nan. "But I'm not contradictin' 'ee."