“An’ whin we gits to Donnybrook Fair, comes Thady, with his fiddle,
An’ all th’ bhoys an’ colleens there a-dancin’ down th’ middle;
Shpuds, shillaleghs, pigs an’ potheen—all as ye thrapsed along—
Hurroo! for a chune on th’ nob av ’um who’d intherrrupt me song!”.
A little fox terrier pup, clinging with ludicrous gravity to a somewhat precarious position behind a man who was perched all doubled up on one of the high stools aforesaid, growled and snapped with puppy viciousness at all teasing attempts to dislodge him, adding to the general uproar. His master, Constable Markham, who, from certain indisputably “simian” peculiarities of feature and habits, was not inaptly designated “the Monk,” had, as the result of his frequent libations, succeeded in cultivating—what, in canteen parlance was termed—“a singing jag.” Now, elbows on bar, he began to bellow out a lone doggerel ditty for his own exclusive benefit. Something where each bucolic verse wound up with—
“O be I I, or bain’t I I—
I tell ee I bain’t zuch a vule as I luke!”
The Orderly-room Sergeant, Dudley, a tall, good-looking fair man about thirty, who, leaning on the bar alongside was endeavoring amidst the din to carry on a conversation with a corporal named Harrison, turned somewhat wearily to the maudlin vocalist.
“Oh, now, for the love of Mike! ... try an’ forget it, Monk, do!” he drawled. “Charity begins at home! ... as if there wasn’t enough racket in here without you adding your little pipe! ... sitting there all humped up an’ hawkin’ away like a—old crow on his native muck-heap! ... Be I I, or bain’t I I?” he exploded, with a snort of derision at the other’s uncouth Somersetshire dialect, and after a long pause: “By gum! there’s no mistake about you ... you’re well named! You’d be quite at home in the jungle!”
He faced round again to the grinning corporal. “Say, Harrison,” he resumed, “don’t know if Benton’s come in yet, do you?” He lowered his voice confidentially. “‘Father’s’ called him in about something and I want to see him directly he lands in—first crack out of the box.”
His eyes, wandering vaguely over the noisy crowd as he spoke, suddenly dilated with surprised recognition as they lighted upon the newcomer, whose unobtrusive entrance amidst the general revelry had somehow escaped his notice.
“Talk of the devil!” he ejaculated with easy incivility; “why here the —— is! Why, hello, Ben! How’s things goin’ in Elbow Vale?”
The object of this familiarity, walking silently forward to the bar with a whimsical smile on his bronzed, dusty countenance, merely opened his mouth to which he pointed in dumb show.
“Dear me!” remarked the Orderly-room Sergeant sympathetically, “as bad as all that? Here, Bob! set ’em up! ... give Sergeant Benton a ‘long ’un’!”