Then, after much frowning, he delivered himself of the following, the ink being shared equally between himself and the paper:—
"The wor was becose the beljums wouldent let the jermens go over there fields so they put minds in the sea and bunbarded people dead with airplans. It was shokkin. The rushens have got a steme roler. We have got a garden roler at home and I pull it sometimes. I dont like jermens. Kitchener said halt your country needs you and weve got a lot of drednorts. The airplans drop boms on anyone if your not looking it isnt fare yours truly T. Brown."
The essay completed to his satisfaction, Tommy Brown conveyed to his mouth a sweet the size and strength of which fully justified the name "Britain's Bulwarks" attached to it by the shopkeeper.
He then leaned back with the air of one who had done his duty in the sphere in which he found himself and proceeded to survey the room.
The other boys were still writing, and for fully half a minute Tommy looked at them in pained surprise.
He then read his own essay again and, finding no flaw in it, frowned once more on his fellow pupils and wrote: "My father won the Victoria Cross Meddle." Having written this he looked round again somewhat defiantly. His eye caught one of the new boys beginning another sheet.
Tommy's essay just filled two-thirds of a page. He would fight that new boy. Just then the words of a war poster came into his head and he wrote in large letters: "Your King and country want you."
Tommy studied this for a minute, and then, as the appeal seemed directed to himself, he wrote: "I'm not old enuf or I'd go my brothers gone I'm not a funk I let Jones miner push a needle into my finger to show him."
It seemed to Tommy Brown that the other boys possessed some secret fund of information, even the new boys. He'd show those new boys after school. Having made up his mind on this point he printed at the bottom of his essay, "Kitchener wants men." As an after-thought he added, "My father was a man."
He let his gaze wander round the room until it fell upon the face of his master, and then, under some impulse, he wrote the fateful words, "Mr. Smith is a man."