“Oh, I’m in splendid heart—eat till I’m fit to bust.”
“You wear your cap like Bill Putland,” said Zacky. “It maakes you look different-like.”
Tom’s cap indeed had a rakish tilt over one ear, though he did not profess to imitate Bill Putland’s jauntiness.
“Maybe old Bill ull git a bit of leave in a week or two. I see Jerry Sumption’s gone back to-day. I met him and minister at the station.”
Mrs. Beatup gave a snort.
“And unaccountable glad I am to see the last of Gipsy Jerry; he’s justabout plagued Ivy to death all the time he’s bin here. She says she’s shut of him, and I hope to goodness she means it.”
“Jerry shud never have gone fur a soldier,” said Tom. “He’s got no praaper ideas of things, and is fur ever gitting in trouble. Come, mother, let’s be walking up to the house and put my bag in the bedroom.”
“Wot’s in your bag?” asked Zacky.
“Soap, razor, slacks, and one or two liddle bits of things,” said Tom, grinning down at him in proud consciousness of two pounds of Derby rock—to such magnificence had his sweetmeat buying risen from his old penn-’orths of bull’s-eyes.
They walked up to the house, and greetings came with Ivy hanging out the clothes, and Harry toiling over the corn accounts in shame-faced arrears. Then his bag was unpacked, and presents given to everybody—sweetstuff to Zacky and Harry, a good knife to his father, and to his mother a wonderful handkerchief case with the arms of the Royal Sussex worked in lurid silks; there was a needlebook of the same sort for Nell, when she should come home from school; and for Ivy there was a mother-o’-pearl brooch, and, which she liked even better, messages from a dozen Sussex chaps at Waterheel.