"Don't be an ass!" they had shouted back at him.
"Yes, there is. The whole blooming world'll be scrapping presently!" He spoke with the queer gaiety of a man who has abandoned all hope. "Just as I was getting on my feet, too!" he went on. He suddenly unburdened himself to a man who had only arrived at the hotel late on the previous evening ... they had never seen each other before ... but now they were revealing intimacies....
"Just getting on my feet," the man who had brought the news went on.
"It'll be very bad for business, I'm afraid!..."
"Bad. Goo' Lor', man, it's ruin ... absolute ruin! I'll be up the pole, that's where I'll be. And I was thinking of getting married, too. Just thinking of it, you know ... nothing settled or anything ... and now ... damn it, what they want to go and have a war for? We don't want one!"
Then the boy with the newspapers appeared, and they rushed at him and tore the papers from his bag....
"By Jove!" they said, "it's ... it's true!"
"I told you it was true. You wouldn't believe me when I told you. You know, it's a Bit Thick, that's what it is. I've been a Liberal all my life, same as my father ... and then this goes and happens! What is a chap to do?..."
He wailed away, filling the air with prophecies of doom and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, to speak, took to its heels. He appeared to them suddenly, carrying an atlas.
"Where the 'ell is Serbia anyway?" he demanded. "I can't find the damn place on the map!"