Pyecroft sleepily.
I stirred the sugar dregs in my glass. Suddenly entered armed men, wet and
discourteous, Tom Wessels smiling nervously in the background.
"Where is that--minutely particularised person--Glass?" said the sergeant
of the picket.
"'Ere!" The marine rose to the strictest of attentions. "An' it's no good
smelling of my breath, because I'm strictly an' ruinously sober."
"Oh! An' what may you have been doin' with yourself?"
"Listenin' to tracts. You can look! I've had the evenin' of my little
life. Lead on to the _Cornucopia's_ midmost dunjing cell. There's a crowd
of brass-'atted blighters there which will say I've been absent without
leaf. Never mind. I forgive them before'and. _The_ evenin' of my life, an'
please don't forget it." Then in a tone of most ingratiating apology to
me: "I soaked it all in be'ind my shut eyes. 'I'm"--he jerked a
contemptuous thumb towards Mr. Pyecroft--"'e's a flatfoot, a indigo-blue
matlow. 'E never saw the fun from first to last. A mournful beggar--most
depressin'." Private Glass departed, leaning heavily on the escort's arm.
Mr. Pyecroft wrinkled his brows in thought--the profound and far-reaching
meditation that follows five glasses of hot whisky-and-water.
"Well, I don't see anything comical--greatly--except here an' there.
Specially about those redooced charges in the guns. Do _you_ see anything
funny in it?"
There was that in his eye which warned me the night was too wet for
argument.
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