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The musing Major cleared his throat, and his large, rather stupid, blonde face was perfectly stolid as he smoked and stared at his host, reminding himself that Beauvayse had been jealous of Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and had feared that, if the fellow knew of the scratch against him, he might force the running; and recalling, with a tingling of the shamed blood in his expansive countenance, how he Wrynche had let Beauvayse into the sordid secret that Alderman Brooker had blabbed.
What I have to tell you is that, some two months after the Relief, when your engagement to the lady who is now your wife was first made public, I, impelled and prompted by a despicable envy of the great good-fortune that had fallen deservedly fallen to your lot, sought out Miss Mildare, and told her something I had learned to your detriment, from a man called Brooker, a babbling, worthless creature, a Gueldersdorp tradesman who, on the strength of a seat upon the local Bench, claimed to be informed."
Can you tell me the way to the Brooker Institute, or to the road down the mountain?" Jeff sat suddenly bolt-upright; in another moment he jumped to his feet. The Brooker Institute was a branch of the Keeley Cure recently established near the Huddle, and this must be a patient who had wandered from it, on one of the excursions the inmates made with their guardians, and lost his way.
He met Jeff's onset with remembered skill and with the strength which he had gained in three months of the wholesome regimen of the Brooker Institute. He had been sent there, not by Dr. Lacy's judgment, but by his despair, and so far the Cure had cured. He felt strong and fresh, and the hate which filled Jeff at sight of him steeled his shaken nerves and reinforced his feebler muscles, too.
Brooker, without volition, assumed the perpendicular, and began to babble: "To tell the truth, sir, it was loquat syrup. Very soothing to the chest, and, upon my honour, perfectly wholesome. Mrs. Brooker makes it regularly every year, and we sell a twenty-gallon barrel over the counter, besides what we keep for ourselves.
Be thankful for it that nothing but a bruise over the ribs has come of it. Corporal, fall in your men, and get to your duty." W. Keyse and his martial citizens tramped on, the resuscitated Brooker flying rags of sanguine stain. Then the stern face of the Chief broke up in laughter. The crinkled-up eyes ran over with tears of mirth. "Lord, that fellow will be the death of me!
Abstinence is the rule I enforce, by precept and example. While men are men they'll drink strong liquor. But as long as they are not fool-men and brute-men, they can be trusted not to lap when they're on duty. Those I find untrustworthy I mark down, and they will be dealt with rigorously. You understand me, Brooker? You look as if you did. You've had a narrow squeak.
'Why then, harkye, Mr Brooker, said Ralph, in his harshest accents, 'and don't expect to draw another speech from me. Harkye, sir. You a hold upon me! Keep it, or publish it to the world, if you like. 'I can't do that, interposed Brooker. 'That wouldn't serve me. 'Wouldn't it? said Ralph. 'It will serve you as much as bringing it to me, I promise you.
The little party of officers in khâki walked up the gravel-drive between the carefully-tended grass plats to the stoep where the Mayor of Gueldersdorp, with the matron, house-surgeon, secretary, and several prominent members of the Committee including Alderman Brooker, puffy-cheeked and yellow-eyed for lack of a night's rest waited.
Brooker, at about eleven-thirty to a quarter to twelve, I was returning from a little tour of inspection" the slight riding sjambok the Chief carried pointed over the veld to the northward "out there, when, passing the south angle of the enclosure of the Convent, where, by my special orders, a double sentry of the Town Guard had been posted, I heard a sound that I will endeavour to reproduce: "Gr'rumph!
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