Then someone who knew "Pongo" well made an apparently irrelevant remark. "There's plum and apple jam for rations again," he said.
"Pongo" rose to the fly at once. "Gawd!" he said, "if that ain't the bloomin' limit. I'd like to get me 'and round the neck of the bloke what gets all the raspberry an' apricot an' marmalade. 'Ere 'ave I been two years in the trenches, an' what 'ave I seen but plum an' apple? If it ain't plum an' apple, it's damson an' apple, which is jest the same only there's more stones in it. It do make me fair wild...."
"Pongo," insinuated someone at this moment, "I thought as 'ow you never grumbled."
"Pongo's" voice sank to its ordinary level. "That ain't grumblin'," he said. "I ain't a one to grumble."
But for the better part of an hour I heard him growling away to himself, and "plum and apple" was the burden of his growl. For even "Pongo" Simpson cannot always practise what he preaches.
XIII
THE CONVERT
John North, of the Non-Combatant Corps, leaned over the counter and smiled lovingly up into the shop girl's face. By an apparent accident, his hand slid across between the apple basket and the tins of biscuits, and came into gentle contact with hers. Knowing no French, his conversation was strictly limited, and he had to make amends for this by talking with his hand—by gently stroking her palm with his earth-stained thumb.
Mademoiselle Thérèse smiled shyly at him and her hand remained on the counter.