“While you were asleep.”
“There you go! You’re as bad as old Knock-’em-down. Fellow’s only got to shut his eyes, and you say he’s asleep. But I don’t care. Everybody’s again’ me, but I’ll serve ’em out.”
“You’d better go on with your writing.”
“Shan’t. Go on with yours. I know. I’ll ’list—that’s what I’ll do. Like to see old Going-going touch me then!”
There was a busy interval of writing, during which something seemed to ask me why I let Mr Dempster behave so brutally to me, and I began wondering whether I was a coward. I felt that I could not be as brave as Esau, or I should have resisted.
“Not half a chap, you ain’t!” said my companion, suddenly.
“Why?”
“You’d say you’d come with me. Deal better to be soldiers than always scrawling down Lot 104 on paper.”
“I don’t want to be a soldier,” I said.
“No; you’re not half a chap. Only wait a bit. I’d ha’ gone long ago if it hadn’t been for mother.”