“Ah,” said he. “No denyin’ that Jane business was more useful to you than the Roman Eagles or the Star an’ Garter. ’Pity there wasn’t any of you Janeites in the ’Oly Land. I never come across ’em.”
“Well, as pore Macklin said, it’s a very select Society, an’ you’ve got to be a Janeite in your ’eart, or you won’t have any success. An’ yet he made me a Janeite! I read all her six books now for pleasure ’tween times in the shop; an’ it brings it all back—down to the smell of the glue-paint on the screens. You take it from me, Brethren, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place. Gawd bless ’er, whoever she was.”
Worshipful Brother Burges, from the floor of the Lodge, called us all from Labour to Refreshment. Humberstall hove himself up—so very a cart-horse of a man one almost expected to hear the harness creak on his back—and descended the steps.
He said he could not stay for tea because he had promised his mother to come home for it, and she would most probably be waiting for him now at the Lodge door.
“One or other of ’em always comes for ’im. He’s apt to miss ’is gears sometimes,” Anthony explained to me, as we followed.
“Goes on a bust, d’you mean?”
“’Im! He’s no more touched liquor than ’e ’as women since ’e was born. No, ’e’s liable to a sort o’ quiet fits, like. They came on after the dump blew up at Eatables. But for them, ’e’d ha’ been Battery Sergeant Major.”
“Oh!” I said. “I couldn’t make out why he took on as mess-waiter when he got back to his guns. That explains things a bit.”
“’Is sister told me the dump goin’ up knocked all ’is Gunnery instruction clean out of ’im. The only thing ’e stuck to was to get back to ’is old crowd. Gawd knows ’ow ’e worked it, but ’e did. He fair deserted out of England to ’em, she says; an’ when they saw the state ’e was in, they ’adn’t the ’eart to send ’im back or into ’ospital. They kep’ ’im for a mascot, as you might say. That’s all dead true. ’Is sister told me so. But I can’t guarantee that Janeite business, excep’ ’e never told a lie since ’e was six. ’Is sister told me so. What do you think?”
“He isn’t likely to have made it up out of his own head,” I replied.