“But what I dis-liked was this baccy-priggin’ beggar, ’oo’s people, on ’is own showin’, couldn’t ’ave been more than thirty or forty years in the coun—on this Gawd-forsaken dust-’eap, comin’ the squire over me. They’re all parsons—we know that, but parson an’ squire is a bit too thick for Alf Copper. Why, I caught ’im in the shameful act of tryin’ to start a aristocracy on a gun an’ a wagon an’ a shambuk! Yes; that’s what it was: a bloomin’ aristocracy.”
“No, it weren’t,” said McBride, at length, on the dirt, above the purloined weekly. “You’re the aristocrat, Alf. Old Jerrold’s givin’ it you ’ot. You’re the uneducated ’ireling of a callous aristocracy which ’as sold itself to the ’Ebrew financier. Meantime, Ducky”—he ran his finger down a column of assorted paragraphs—“you’re slakin’ your brutal instincks in furious excesses. Shriekin’ women an’ desolated ’omesteads is what you enjoy, Alf …, Halloa! What’s a smokin’ ’ektacomb?”
“’Ere! Let’s look. ’Aven’t seen a proper spicy paper for a year. Good old Jerrold’s!” Pinewood and Moppet, reservists, flung themselves on McBride’s shoulders, pinning him to the ground.
“Lie over your own bloomin’ side of the bed, an’ we can all look,” he protested.
“They’re only po-ah Tommies,” said Copper, apologetically, to the prisoner. “Po-ah unedicated Khakis. They don’t know what they’re fightin’ for. They’re lookin’ for what the diseased, lying, drinkin’ white stuff that they come from is sayin’ about ’em!”
The prisoner set down his tin of coffee and stared helplessly round the circle.
“I—I don’t understand them.”
The Canadian sergeant, picking his teeth with a thorn, nodded sympathetically:
“If it comes to that, we don’t in my country!… Say, boys, when you’re through with your English mail you might’s well provide an escort for your prisoner. He’s waitin’.”
“Arf a mo’, Sergeant,” said McBride, still reading.