s' guffaws seemed a scarcely proper comment on his condition. I
might have spared myself these misgivings. "Say, chum," he interrogated
me feebly, "what's that noise?" "Nigger minstrels, old man."
"Golly!--and have I got to go straight to my bed?"

Alas, he had to. It would be long before he could be well enough to be
taken to one of our entertainments. But, had he been given his way, he
would have gone direct from his fatiguing overseas journey into the Old
Rec. to join the family party and chuckle at Mr. Bones and Massa
Jawns'n.... No doubts assailed _his_ mind as to whether it was right to
"waste bed-space" on mere frivolities. A nigger minstrel show was to him
a deal more important, in fact, than his wound. And perhaps, in
instinct, he was not far wrong.

XII

THE COCKNEY

Before I enlisted I was lodging in a house which it was occasionally
convenient to approach by a short cut through an area of slumland. One
night when traversing this slum--the hour was 1.30 a.m.--I was stopped
by a couple of women who told me that there was a man lying on the
ground in an adjacent alley; they thought he must be ill; would I come
and look at him?

They led me down a turning which opened into a narrow court. This court
was reached by an arched tunnel through tenement houses. The tunnel was
pitchy black, but I struck matches as I proceeded, and presently we came
upon the object of my companions' solicitude--a young soldier, propped
against the wall and with his legs projecting across the flagstones.
The women had, in fact, discovered him by tripping over those legs in
the darkness.

They were slatternly women, but warm-hearted; and when I had managed to
arouse the gentleman in khaki and hoist him to his feet (for the cause
of his indisposition was plain--and he had slept it off) they called
down blessings on my head and overwhelmed our friend with sympathy which
he did not wholly deserve and to which he made no rejoinder. Nor did he
vouchsafe any very lucid answer when I asked him whither he was bound. I
was prepared to pilot him--but I could hardly do so without knowing
towards which point of the compass he proposed to steer, or rather, to
be steered. "I know w'ere I wanter go," was all I could get out of him.
Very well; if he knew his address, it was no concern of mine; he could
lead on; I would act as a mere supporter. In this capacity, with my arm
linked firmly in his, I brought him forth from the tunnel to the st