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There were so few wounded that I was able to have a chat with each of them, and the poor "éclopés" were happy gambling for ha'pence in the garden of the St. Vincent. In the evening I went up to the Kursaal to dine with Mrs. Wynne. Our two new warriors who have come out with ambulances have stood this absolutely quiet time for three days, and are now leaving because it is too dangerous!
Ihre paar Groschen!" and then the two voices shrieked incoherently together until Fraulein's door slammed to and Anna's voice, shouting and swearing, died away towards the basement. Miriam had crept back to the schoolroom window. She stood shivering, trying to forget the taunting words, and the cruel laughter. "You can have your ha'pence!" Poor Anna. Her poor wages. Her bony face...
"Now, sir, if you go for to interrupt me like that I'll 'ave to charge a bob for this here valk; I couldn't stand it for sixpence." "Come, Slidder, don't be greedy." "Vell, sir, if you got as many kicks as I do, and as few ha'pence, p'r'aps you'd be greedy too." "Perhaps I should, my boy," said I, in a gentle tone. "But come, I will give you an extra sixpence if we get along well.
Scrimgour was not there himself; but there was a small active body in his room as tossed the money for him fair enough; though not so liberally as was expected, being mostly ha'pence where pennies was looked for. Such was not my father's opinion, and him and a few others only had a vote.
Besides, they disliked the look of the long topes, or field guns, of whose powers they were uncertain. They therefore displayed a much more humble spirit. On the other hand, every one in the force had realised that there were "more kicks than ha'pence" to be got out of the Mamund Valley. All the villages in the plain had been destroyed. Only a few of those in the hollows of the hills remained.
From the inhabitants of the villages and farms, too, they met with more kicks than ha'pence. Again and again the people refused to sell anything to those whom they considered their enemies, and some even denied them the common courtesy of a drink of water.
I am writing, because I must do something to live by, and I know of nothing else open to me except pen-work. Whatever trash I turned out, I should be justified; as a man, it's my duty to join in the rough-and-tumble for more or less dirty ha'pence. You, as a woman, have no such duty; nay, it's your positive duty to keep out of the beastly scrimmage. 'It seemed to me that I was doing something.
'You, an incarnate sinecure and vested interest, a creature revelling in an unearned income of fabulous Oriental magnificence I dare say, putting one thing with another, fully as much as five hundred a year to ask me, the unbeneficed and insignificant, with my wretched pittance of eighty pounds per annum and my three pass-men a term for classical mods, how I scrape together the few miserable, hoarded ha'pence which I grudgingly invest in my pots and pipkins!
"Robert Arnold, the sentence of this here court is that you'm to be turned for'ard and conwerted into a `hordinary seaman, to do a hordinary seaman's dooties, and to receive just exactly the same treatment as you've sarved out to the hands since this here ship sailed from Hold England, namely, more kicks than ha'pence. And the Lord have mercy on yer miserable carcase!"
The ha'pence are due to an avuncular relative who has a quite inexplicable penchant for an idle niece." "My congratulations. Still, I hope this unexpected windfall isn't going to keep you off the concert platform altogether?" "Not more than my own distaste for playing in public," she answered. "I'd much rather write music than perform." "I can hardly believe you really dislike the publicity?
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