'E give
me 'arf a crown because I read so well. And 'e says the next time there's
anything 'e wants read 'e'll send for me."
"That's good hearing, but I do think for all the half-crown--put it into the
kicking-donkey money-box, Alf, and let me see you do it--he might have kept you
longer. Why, he couldn't have begun to understand how beautiful you read."
"He's best left to hisself--gentlemen always are when they"re downhearted,"
said Mr. Beeton.
Alf's rigorously limited powers of comprehending Torpenhow"s special
correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could hear, through
the boy's nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares behind the soldiers
outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and chaffing across the cooking
pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke as it drifted over camp before the
wind of the desert.
That night he prayed to God that his mind might be taken from him, offering for
proof that he was worthy of this favour the fact that he had not shot himself
long ago. That prayer was not answered, and indeed Dick knew in his heart of
hearts that only a lingering sense of humour and no special virtue had kept him
alive. Suicide, he had persuaded himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the
gravity of the situation as well as a weak-kneed confession of fear.
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