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Updated: June 18, 2025
Later, 'Enery sought the sergeant. "Mind you this, sergeant," he said, "if there's any volunteerin' for the job o' fetchin' that chap in, he belongs to me. I found 'im." The sergeant grinned. "Robinson was here two minutes ago wi' the same tale," he said. "Seems you're all in a great hurry to get shot." "Like his bloomin' cheek!" said the indignant 'Enery.
"If you don't mind." "You see I got a brother a nelder brother, an' by name 'Enery; an' last year he went for a miner in South Africa, at a place that I can't neither spell nor pronounce till it winds up with 'bosh. So we'll call it Bosh." "Right-o! But why did he go for that miner? To relieve 'is feelin's?" "You don't understand.
"Beg pardon, sir," said 'Enery Irving with lofty dignity, "but if I 'adn't started this row the 'ole trenchful o' Frenchies would 'ave been 'owling our 'Gawd Save. I saw that 'ud be a clean give-away, an' the order bein' to act so as to deceive " "Quite right," said the officer, "and a smart idea of yours to block it.
"You're a nice one to 'act so as to deceive, you are," he said warmly. "I s'pose a khaki sleeve is likely to make the 'Uns believe we're French. Now, you watch me." He pulled back his tunic sleeve, held his shirtsleeved arm up the moment the next wave came, and motioned a reply. "He's in a hole o' some sort," said 'Enery. "Now I wonder who it is. A Frenchie by his tunic sleeve."
'Arding is my name, sir. If you get a call from 'Enery 'Arding, you'll know that I 'ave a word to say to you." So it happened about three days later that our American journalist in his London hotel received a letter that a Mr. Henry Harding desired to speak with him. The man was waiting in the hall dressed in quiet tweeds.
'Exit the waiter curtain, an' soft music! remarked a private known as 'Enery Irving throughout the battalion, and whistled a stave of 'We shall meet, but we shall miss him.
Whether he got through, or whether the burst of rifle fire reached the listening ears at the guns, nobody knew; but just as 'Enery did his ear-embracing shoulder-shrug the first shells screamed over, burst and leaped down along the German parapet. After that there was no complaint about the guns.
A blackbird whistled from the shrubberies where he once passed an entire day in hiding, after emptying an ink-bottle down the German governess's dress. He heard the old family butler in his wheezy voice calling in vain for 'Mr. 'Enery' to come in. The tone was respectful, seductive as the man could make it, yet reproachful.
His artistic soul revolted at last at the repetition, but since the only other French tune that was suggested was the Blue Danube Waltz, and there appeared to be divergent opinions as to its nationality, "Snapper" at last struck, and refused to play the "Marseillaise" a single time more. 'Enery Irving enthusiastically took up this matter of "acting so as to deceive the Germans." "Act!" he said.
Slater attributed this to the fact that three weeks before the boy's birth, Horny Slater, Senior, had, in a fine frenzy of inebriation, hit her over the head with a chair. "Dead drunk, 'e was, and never a thought to the child coming, ''Enery, I said to him, 'it's the child you're hitting as well as me'; but 'e was too far gone, poor soul, to take a thought."
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