“And that ought to dish the lad till the end of the war,” observed he, “whereafter he’ll have precious small use for his German linguistic lore—unless he goes to Berlin for the Iron Cross or a Commission in the Potsdammer Poison-Gas Guards, or somethin’, what?”
CHAPTER XIX
Of a Pudding
There was a sound of revelry by night, at the Bristol Bar. A Plum Pudding had arrived. Into that lonely outpost, where men languished and yearned for potatoes, cabbage, milk, cake, onions, beer, steaks, chocolate, eggs, cigarettes, bacon, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, jam, sausages, honey, sugar, ham, tobacco, pastry, toast, cheese, wine and other things of which they had almost forgotten the taste, a Plum Pudding had drifted. When it had begun to seem that food began and ended with coco-nut, maize, bully-beef and dog-biscuit—a Plum Pudding rose up to rebuke error.
At least, it was going to do so. At present it lay, encased in a stout wooden box and a soldered sarcophagus of tin, at the feet of the habitués of the Bristol Bar, what time they looked upon the box and found it good in their sight. . . .
“You’ll dine with us and sample it, I hope, Wavell?” said the Major, eyeing the box ecstatically.
“Thanks,” was the reply. “Delighted. . . . May I bring over some brandy to burn round it?”
“Stout fella,” said the Major warmly.
“Do we eat it as it is—or fry it, or something, or what?” he added. “I fancy you bake ’em. . . .”
“I believe puddings are boiled, sir,” remarked Bertram.
“Yes—I b’lieve you’re right, Greene,” agreed Major Mallery. . . . “I seem to know the expression, ‘boiled plum-pudding.’ . . . Yes—boiled plum-pudding. . . .”