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Now Dick and Jerry, each in his own mind, had suspected that Hugh would come back from his trip full of "swank", and each had decided that gently and politely, but very firmly, he would squash the swanker. But there was no sign of the conquering hero about Hugh.
"Not much. In fact, I took a particular dislike to the fellow. Wrong type of sportsman, eh?" "Decidedly. Fine figure of a man and good-looking enough, but spoilt by that objectionable, cock-sure manner." "And I should say a by no means decent character." "A swanker to the finger-tips. And that implies a liar." "Not worth discussing," Kelson said. "He goes to-morrow.
"I certainly don't see why he should be inconvenienced and kept out of his bed by that swanker, who has probably gone off with some pal and hasn't had the decency to leave word to that effect. Bad style of man altogether. Hullo! What's this?" "What's the matter?" Gifford crossed to Kelson, who was looking at his shirt-cuff. "What's this?" A dark red streak was on the white linen.
She did not exactly know what a swanker was, probably it referred to some unspeakable form of cruelty, but she read enough in the first few sentences of the article to discover that her cousin Robert, the man at whose house she was about to stay, was an unscrupulous, unprincipled character, of a low order of intelligence, yet cunning withal, and that he and his associates were responsible for most of the misery, disease, poverty, and ignorance with which the country was afflicted; never, except in one or two of the denunciatory Psalms, which she had always supposed to have be written in a spirit of exaggerated Oriental imagery, had she read such an indictment of a human being.
Alethia pounced on it, in the expectation of finding a cultured literary endorsement of the censure which these rough farming men had expressed in their homely, honest way. She had not far to look; "Mr. Robert Bludward, Swanker," was the title of one of the principal articles in the paper.
To this question his fellow-traveller replied, "Swanker anan!" And the lover resumed his suit, saying, "Oons! how you tickle my timber! Something shoots from your arm, through my stowage, to the very keelstone. Han't you got quicksilver in your hand?" "Quicksilver!" said the lady, "d n the silver that has crossed my hand this month; d'ye think, if I had silver, I shouldn't buy me a smock?"
When we were resting at Quality Street near Loos, for example" he paused a moment, and with a playful dig from his banana-like thumb nearly knocked me on the floor "why, name of a dog! There you have a case in point!" "A case of a swanker?" "A case of one of those spies. We caught the perisher. Begad, we did!"
They were as follows Rugby, Upton Bristol, Millhill, Songster, Sandy, Mack, Mercury, Wolf, Amundsen, Hercules, Hackenschmidt, Samson, Sammy, Skipper, Caruso, Sub, Ulysses, Spotty, Bosun, Slobbers, Sadie, Sue, Sally, Jasper, Tim, Sweep, Martin, Splitlip, Luke, Saint, Satan, Chips, Stumps, Snapper, Painful, Bob, Snowball, Jerry, Judge, Sooty, Rufus, Sidelights, Simeon, Swanker, Chirgwin, Steamer, Peter, Fluffy, Steward, Slippery, Elliott, Roy, Noel, Shakespeare, Jamie, Bummer, Smuts, Lupoid, Spider, and Sailor.
"I know the brilliant bloke you mean," my friend conceded modestly, "though calling me 'orrible names like that would brand you as a swanker or a gentleman wot had left his manners in the hall in any barrack room from here to Hindustan.
I made a serious blunder when I asked one of them a question about Ypres, for I pronounced the name French fashion, which put me under suspicion as a "swanker." "Don't try to come it, son," he said. "S'y 'Wipers. That's wot we calls it." Henceforth it was "Wipers" for me, although I learned that "Eeps" and "Yipps" are sanctioned by some trench authorities.
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