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I remember scores of little things like that, things done and things said with an incorruptible sweetness and affection, but things accentuated with lapsed aitches and with gestures that only Jimmy was unaware of. Those years are marked for me more than anything by the awful increase in his solecisms. Their number, their enormity and frequency rose with his income, and for the best of reasons.
"I am enchanted to meet you, sir. We 'oped to see you at dinner." Chester bowed. She had a pleasant voice, this friend of Sylvia's, and she spoke English well, even if she did drop her aitches! "It is getting rather late" Chester turned to Sylvia, but he spoke quite pleasantly. "Yes, we must be going; are you staying on?"
I laughed, wishing to cheer him, though I knew he was right. "Surely your daughter belongs to your own class," I replied. "Do you think so?" he asked, with a grin. "That's not a pretty compliment to her. She was my child when she used to cling round my neck, while I made the sausages, calling me her dear old pig. It didn't trouble her then that I dropped my aitches and had a greasy skin.
"Ladies and gentlemen: It was with surprise not unmixed with pardonable pride that I heard you calling my name upon this momentous occasion. But never has Marshall Adams failed to listen to the call of his country in dishtresh!" he cried, making a determined effort to control his inebriated aitches and waving his sword arm defiantly. "And we are in dire distress, my countrymen!
For my father, George Smith, was a ruddy English ship-chandler who pitched upon Boston for a home, and lived with his family in the rooms above his shop; and my grandmother Smith dropped her "aitches" with the cheerful ease of one to the manner born, bless her stout old Cockney heart!
One was a squint-eyed little Cockney that misplaced his aitches, but was always on hand when you wanted anything. Another was a tall, lanky Swede who was always "Yust coomin', sir." Then there was the bristly-haired Hungarian we called Goulash. They'd all seemed harmless enough before; but now we took to sizin' 'em up close.
They are rather what you in England call nouveaux riches." "Really!" Her Ladyship was taken aback for a moment. "But you would never notice it with Asako, would you? I mean, she does not drop her Japanese aitches, and that sort of thing, does she?" "Oh no," Count Saito reassured her, "I do not think Mademoiselle Asako talks Japanese language, so she cannot drop her aitches."
Her father was a farmer, and she's never bothered about aitches in her life. We've had twelve children and nine of them are alive. I tell her it's about time she stopped, but she's an obstinate woman, she's got into the habit of it now, and I don't believe she'll be satisfied till she's had twenty."
In the army you will hear a Scotchman doing what he never did before dropping his aitches. He has caught it from his English comrades. You will hear him say "Not 'arf" an inane tag which, despite its popularity in London, failed to find any foothold north of the Tweed before the war.
"Well, old Noel Hasluck's not exactly a fool," he assented, "but I'd like myself better if I could talk about something else than business, and didn't drop my aitches. And so would my little gell." "You have a daughter?" asked my mother, with whom a child, as a bond of sympathy with the stranger took the place assigned by most women to disrespectful cooks and incompetent housemaids.
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