“I suppose the negro doesn’t make a very good servant?” Bertram continued, as Piggy rumbled on in denunciation.
“Finest servants in the world,” answered that gentleman. “The only servants, in fact. . . .”
“Should I take one with me on active service?” asked Bertram, suddenly remembering Ali Suleiman, alias Sloper.
“If you can get one,” was the reply. “You’ll be lucky if you can. . . . All snapped up by the officers of the Expeditionary Force, long ago.”
“Yes,” agreed Bill. “Make all the difference to your comfort if you can get one. Don’t take any but a Swahili, though. . . . You can depend on ’em, in a tight place. The good ones, that is. . . .”
A big, fat, clean-shaven man, dressed in white drill, strolled up to the little group. He reminded Bertram of the portraits of Mr. William Jennings Bryan who had recently visited India, and in three days unhesitatingly given his verdict on the situation, his solution of all political difficulties, and his opinion of the effete Britisher—uttering the final condemnation of that decadent.
“Hello! Hiram Silas P. Pocahantas of Pah,” remarked Piggy, with delicate pleasantry, and the big man nodded, smiled, and drew up a chair.
“The drinks are on me, boys,” quoth he. “Set ’em up,” and bursting into song, more or less tunefully, announced—
“I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,”
whereat Bill hazarded the opinion that the day might unexpectedly and ruddily dawn when he’d blooming well wish he bally well had, and that he could join them in a cocktail if he liked—or he could bung off if he didn’t. Apparently William disapproved of the American’s attitude, and that of his Government, toward the War and the Allies’ part therein; for, on the American’s “allowing he would consume a highball” and the liquor arriving, he drank a health to those who are not too proud to fight, to those who do not give themselves airs as the Champions of Freedom, and then stand idly by when Freedom is trampled in the dust, and to those whose Almighty God is not the Almighty Dollar!