"I reckons there are troublous times ahead of us, sir," went on the old man. "More troublous than any we are going through now—though them's bad enough, in all conscience. Why, only the other evening, I was down at the Fiddlers' Arms, for a glass of what they do call beer—'tis dreadful stuff, sir, that there Government beer. . . ." Old John sighed mournfully at the thought of what had been. "I was sitting in there, as I says, when in comes some young feller from Grant's garage, up the road. Dressed classy he was—trying to ape his betters—with a yellow forefinger from smoking them damned stinking fags—and one of them stuck behind his ear.
"'Hullo, gaffer,'" he says, 'how's the turnips?'
"'Looking worse in France than they do in England,' says I. 'Have you been to see?'
"That hit him, sir, that did," chuckled old John. "He fair squirmed for a moment, while the others laughed. 'Don't you know I'm on work of national importance?' he says. 'I'm exempted.'
"'The only work of national importance you're ever likely to do, my lad,' says I, 'won't be done till you're dead. And not then if you're buried proper.'
"'What do you mean?' he asks.
"'You might help the turnips you're so anxious about,' says I, 'if they used you as manure.'" Old John, completely overcome by the remembrance of this shaft, laughed uproariously.
"You should have seen his face, sir," he went on when he had partially recovered. "He got redder and redder, and then he suddenly says, 'e says, 'Weren't you the lodge keeper up at Rumfold Hall?'
"'I was,' I answered quiet like, because I thought young Master
Impudence was getting on dangerous ground.
"'One of the poor wretched slaves,' he sneers, 'of a bloated aristocrat. . . . We're going to alter all that,' he goes on, and then for a few minutes I let him talk. He and his precious friends were going to see that all that wretched oppression ceased, and then he finished up by calling me a slave again, and sneering at his Lordship."