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At twelve we were treated to a small dole of skilly, the most execrable food I have ever tasted even in a German prison camp. It was skilly in the fullest sense of the word. Whatever entered into its composition must have been used most sparingly; its nutritive value was absolutely negligible.
"I say, though, did you know that he was a pauper, and lived on skilly?" "No," said the gardener quietly; and I felt as if I must get up and go away, for now I knew I should be a mark of contempt for the whole staff who worked in the garden. "He was," said Philip. "Pauper, was he?" said Bunce, making his scythe glide round in a half circle. "I shouldn't ha' thought it."
I look upon the Treasury Bench in July as a sort of casual-ward which we know to be necessary, but is almost too horrid to be contemplated." "Men do get bread and skilly there certainly; but, Mrs. Finn, we can go into the library and smoking-room." "Oh, yes; and a clerk in an office can read the newspapers instead of doing his duty.
After a prayer the assembly broke up, only those being requested to remain who required advice. The prayer was characteristic, being interspersed with groans from the gallery; and then a paper bag, containing bread and cakes, was given to each, Ned observing, "There, the devil don't give you that. He gives you toke and skilly."
Even the "drunks" and they were not strangers to Ruhleben, despite the fact that alcoholic liquor was religiously taboo, the liquor being smuggled in and paid heavily for, a bottle of Red Seal costing fifteen shillings never gave us the slightest cause for anxiety. One day there was a serious explosion of discontent. We had been served at our mid-day meal with a basin of evil-looking skilly.
He tried to see himself making his own bed, and scrubbing his own floor, and standing at his cell door with a tin pot in his hand, waiting for his skilly. It was so absurd, so out of the question, that he nearly laughed outright. He was in a dream in a nightmare! He shook himself, he pinched himself, in order to wake up.
There is no reason on earth why a shoeblack should not read Schiller, or moralise as he does in Bret Harte's parody of Bulwer Lytton. A bachelor artist might do worse than get locked up for some simple offence, and thus throw himself upon the nation. Remember what Sir Walter Raleigh did in prison. The poet can rise superior to the sordidness of skilly.
I'll wager my evening skilly I carry it through." One of the men in the shadows moved, and spoke in a repressive tone. "Shut up, Nick! This is no mess-room joke." Nick made a sharp, half-contemptuous gesture. "A joke only ceases to be a joke when there is no one left to laugh, sir," he said. "We haven't come to that at present."
"It slipped out, though, and I was sorry when it was too late." "Never mind; and don't you leave your work for them. Now come and have a look at my cucumber house, and then ha, ha, ha! there's something better than skilly for dinner, my boy." I found out that Mr Solomon had another nature beside the one that seemed cold.
His mood softened, and we helped him to his feet, M'Iver a silent man because he failed to comprehend this turn of affairs. We took him to a cothouse down at the foot of the wood, where he lay while a boy was sent for a skilly woman.
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