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On Tuesday they had a reading from Shakespeare, conducted by the Captain, and, to judge from the sotto-voce remarks of the audience, they were neither amused nor instructed. "'E must be wet if 'e thinks we liken listenin' to this 'ere stuff!" muttered Able Seaman McSweeny dismally. "'E talks abart 'is ruddy merchant o' Venice, but I doesn't want to 'ear nothin' abart a.... Eyetalian shopkeeper.
'You means them wot we 'ad fur that there boat racin' yesterday? 'Yes, sez Jimmy the One. 'I wants 'em all bled before seven bells this mornin'. 'Aye, aye, sir, sez Scroggins, and goes off to see abart it." "Bleed the boys!" I murmured in surprise. "Do you mean to tell me they still have these archaic methods in the Navy?" "Course they does, sir," answered the A. B. "They won't float else."
He now sat on the turf mopping his heated countenance with a mottled blue and white handkerchief; but a few minutes later, having recovered himself sufficiently to smoke, produced a pipe, tobacco box, and matches from the interior of his cap. "You 'aint got a fill o' 'bacca abart you, I suppose, sir?" he queried, exploring the inner recesses of his brass tobacco box with a horny forefinger.
Ortheris his real name by the by is Arthur Jewell hasn't any of these troubles. 'The b y Germans butted into Belgium, he says. 'We've got to 'oof 'em out again. That's all abart it. Leastways it's all I know.... I don't know nothing about Serbia, I don't know nothing about anything, except that the Germans got to stop this sort of gime for Everlasting, Amen....
"Always fun to see a bloke swallow a wasp when 'e's corfin' up a fly," he said pleasantly. "Don't you see you've bunged up old Smith anyhow. If this parson's tale's O.K. why, Smith is 'ot. 'E's pretty 'ot. Well, what abart this Mrs. Smith the curate talks of, with her blarsted shyness transmigogrified into a blighted sharpness? Miss Gray ain't been very sharp, but I reckon she'll be pretty shy."
But now the war's been won by poor blokes like meself, 'e ain't ashamed ter go banging abart in h'Army cars." "I know how you feel," Tabs said. "But you're mistaken; I served in the ranks two years myself. I was only demobbed yesterday; to-day's my first day out of uniform. I'll pay you whatever you think fair; so you don't need to work yourself up." The man's attitude changed completely.
But your education has been neglected, my dear." "Will ye be willin' ter tyke the service at the cimitery, sir?" said the undertaker, and John answered that he would. The grave was on the paupers' side, and when the undertaker, with his man, had lowered the coffin to its place, he said, "They've gimme abart three more funerals this morning, so I'll leave ye now, sir, to finish 'er off."
"I thought it good fun at first, but presently I could only keep from crying by having a good laugh, and I was doing that, and asking somebody the way to the Holborn omnibus, when a policeman pushed me and said: 'Come, move on; none of yer lyterin' abart here!
"What abart the end of the world, old gel?" and then references to "the petticoats" and more laughter. "'Ere, I'll 'ave five bob each way, Resurrection," and shrieks of wilder laughter still. The preacher stood for some moments silent and unshaken. Then the quiet dignity of the man and the love of fair play in the crowd secured him a hearing.
"Leggo, I tell you! Where's your manners, 'orlin' me abart! If that's the way you be'ayve with your Dutch ones ...!" He spat and asseverated: "Neen! I no other girls but you heb got." It was the Slabberts with Emigration Jane. "Ho! So you can talk English a bit give you a charnce?" "Ja, a little now and then when it is useful.
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