“Ho!... Hullah, my man.”
“Yes, Tom.”
“Do you know what I think you are?”
Hullah stammered. It was so hard to get a start in business—the competition—he’d gone straight except for that once.
“I think you’re the blackguardest, off-est scamp in the trade, and I wouldn’t be found dead in a ditch with you. That’s juicy, coming from me. I’m no saint, but just a common-or-garden Tommy, with a defaulter sheet it’s a sin to read; and I say you’re a blackguard, and dead-off.”
Hullah cringed. He’d gone straight since—Peterson had already pushed him for twice what he’d had out of it—it was hard to be persecuted like this, hard. The cherub revolved in his mind phrases of elaborate and over-done irony.
Suddenly Hullah mentioned his wife, and the pink of the cherub’s face deepened.
“Come into the yard,” he said.
Hullah followed him into a dusty plot, where hens scratched and cases and barrels lay scattered everywhere.
“What did you say?” the soldier demanded.