“Oh, I ain’t goin’ to do anythin’ to you. I’m recon-noiterin’ in my own. Say ‘pore Tommy’ ’alf-a-dozen times.”
The prisoner obeyed.
“That’s what’s been puzzlin’ me since I ’ad the pleasure o’ meetin’ you,” said Copper. “You ain’t ’alf-caste, but you talk chee-chee—pukka bazar chee-chee. Proceed.”
“Hullo,” said the Sergeant of the picket, twenty minutes later, “where did you round him up?”
“On the top o’ yonder craggy mounting. There’s a mob of ’em sitting round their Bibles seventeen ’undred yards (you said it was seventeen ’undred?) t’other side—an’ I want some coffee.” He sat down on the smoke-blackened stones by the fire.
“’Ow did you get ’im?” said McBride, professional humorist, quietly filching the English weekly from under Copper’s armpit.
“On the chin—while ’e was waggin’ it at me.”
“What is ’e? ’Nother Colonial rebel to be ’orribly disenfranchised, or a Cape Minister, or only a loyal farmer with dynamite in both boots. Tell us all about it, Burjer!”
“You leave my prisoner alone,” said Private Copper. “’E’s ’ad losses an’ trouble; an’ it’s in the family too. ’E thought I never read the papers, so ’e kindly lent me his very own Jerrold’s Weekly—an’ ’e explained it to me as patronisin’ as a—as a militia subaltern doin’ Railway Staff Officer. ’E’s a left-over from Majuba—one of the worst kind, an’ ’earin’ the evidence as I did, I don’t exactly blame ’im. It was this way.”
To the picket Private Copper held forth for ten minutes on the life-history of his captive. Allowing for some purple patches, it was an absolute fair rendering.