In a minute or two he broke out again: “Lot ’v ceouws in a field here, Tom!”
“Faugh!” said Tom; “faw mo’ ’n Essex!”
But the man of humility had an eye for landscape, and couldn’t be repressed.
“Ho, crikkie”, he exclaimed, “look at that meadow an’ canal. Ain’t it stunnin’?”
But the father came to his son’s rescue in defence of Old England. “Yeou jist go deouwn Nawf’k wiy! Faw better th’n this wretched ’ole!”
The satellite evidently felt reproved for his lack of patriotism, for he subsided immediately. But he couldn’t help himself. You might see by the way he looked out of the window that he was in ecstasies over the glowing panorama before him, in spite of Norfolk and Essex and the contempt of his fellow-travellers.
Meantime Terence, fuming and in disgust, had buried himself in the columns of Tit-Bits. The truculent one recognised the familiar weekly, and drawing his son’s attention to both reader and paper he announced quite audibly; “’E can read Hinglish. ’E looks hintelligent.”
DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?
Advancing half way across the carriage, he cleared his throat, and addressed Terence at the top of his voice.
“Do you—a hem!—a hem!—do you—speak Hinglish?”