The Happy WarriorHutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
General
The Happy Warrior
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Fiction
Everybody notices it: Aunt Maggie, who only smiles; Lady Burdon, who
says: "Rollo, Percival's a regular little father to you, it seems to
me. Don't let him rule you, you know. Remember what you are, Rollo
mine." Even Egbert Hunt notices it. Mr. Hunt is still attached to
Rollo's person. Sick yedaches trouble him less frequently; but his
hatred of tyrangs has deepened with the increasing tenure of his
servitude. He spends less of his wages on vegules; much of it on
socialistic literature of an inflammatory nature; but he never forgets
the sympathy of Percival in the vegule days, and he is strongly joined
with all those who, meeting the boy, have a note stirred by his sunny
nature.
"Always does me good to see you," Mr. Hunt says one day. "Something
about you. He'll never be a slave who works for you."
"Well, who's going to work for me?" Percival inquires.
"The point!" says Mr. Hunt with impressive gloom. "The very point."
He fumbles in his pocket and produces thumbed papers, just as he
fumbled and produced vegules at an earlier day. "It's in the
lowlier"--he consults a paper--"in the lowlier strata that you find the
men a man can follow, but the men that can't lead owing to the heel of
the tyrang. It's the Bloodsuckers we got to serve." He indicates the
paper: "Bloodsuckers, they call 'em here."
"Silly rot," says Percival.
"Ah, you're young," Mr. Hunt returns. "You're young. You'll learn
different when they begin to sap your blood for you. You're a higher
strata than me, Master Percival. Benificent influence of education,
you've had. But you're under the Bloodsuckers. Squeeze you out like
an orindge, they will, and throw yer away. Me one day, you another."
He indicated the paper again. "There's a strong bit here called
'Squeezed Orindges.' Makes yer boil."
"I'm boiling already," says Percival. "It's a jolly hot day. If you
don't like being what you are, I wonder you don't be something else."
"No good," Mr. Hunt tells him. "Out of one tyrang's heel and under
another. We've got to suffer and endure, us orindges, until the day
when they are swept away like chaff before the wind."
Percival is rather interested: "Well, who's going to sweep them? and
sweep whom?"
"Ah!" says Mr. Hunt darkly. "Who? Makes yer boil."
"Well, I shouldn't worry, Hunt," says Percival, in the old "Have you
got one of your poor sick yedaches?" tone. "I shouldn't, really. I
feel angry sometimes, but you've only got to have a game of something,
you know. There's Rollo! Come on down and help us to build that raft
on Fir-Tree Pool. We'll have a jolly time. Rollo! Hunt's going to
help us, so we can get that big plank down now! Come on, Hunt!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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