"You go an' wash yer fice once more, Smithy," said Shiney, forcing a word in edgeways. "It'll improve your looks, per'aps. I dunno."
"That's done it," yelped Smithy, warming to his theme. "That's just yer narsty, scoffin' British w'y o' speakin' to quiet, respectable Germans. That's wot gets us mad. I'm surprised at yer, Shiney! Yer hattitude brings tears to me heyes. Time an' agine you've 'eard ahr bee-utiful langwidge----"
"I 'ave, indeed," interrupted Shiney. "But none o' it 'ere, me lad. There's a reel born lydy in one o' them bedrooms."
"I'm not torkin' o' the kind of tosh _you_ hunderstand," retorted Smithy. "I'm alludin' to the sweet-sahndin' langwidge o' our conquerors. You've 'eard it hoffen enuf from the sorft mowves o' Yewlans. On'y larst night you 'eard it spoke by that stawr hactor, Von 'Allwig, of the Potsdam Busters. Yet you can git nothink orf yer chest but a low-dahn cockney wheeze w'en a benefactor's givin' yer the strite tip. Pore Shiney! Ye think yer goin' back to Hengland, 'ome, an' beauty--to the barrick-square, bully-beef an' booze, an' plenty o' it. Dontcher believe it! Wot you're in fer is a dose o' German _Kultur_. W'en yer ship's been torpedoed fourteen times between Hostend an' Dover, w'en yer sarth-eastern trine 'as bumped inter a biker's dozen o' different sorts o' mines, w'en you're Zepped the minnit you crorse the Strend to the nearest pub, you'll begin ter twig wot the Hemperor of All the 'Uns is ackshally a-doin' of. It's hall hup wiv yer, Shiney! You've ether got ter lie dahn an' doi, er learn German. Nah, w'ich is it ter be? Go west wiv yer benighted country, or go nap on the Keyser?"
"Torkin' o' pubs reminds me," yawned Shiney. "I couldn't get any forrarder on that ginger-pop the Belgian horficers gev us. In one o' them Yewlans' pawket-books there was five French quid. Wot abart a bottle o' beer?"
"What abart it?" agreed Smithy instantly.
The soap was drying on Dalroy's face, but he thrust his head out of the window to look at two of Britain's first line swaggering through the gateway of the inn, and whistling, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary." Smith and Shiney were true types of the somewhat cynical but ever ready-witted and laughter-loving Londoner, who makes such a first-rate fighting man. They were just a couple of ordinary "Tommies." The deadly fury of Mons, the daily and nightly peril of the march through a land stricken by a brutal enemy, the score of little battles which they had conducted with an amazing skill and hardihood--these phases of immortality troubled them not at all. An eye-rolling and sabre-rattling emperor might rock the social foundations of half the world, his braggart henchmen destroy that which they could never rebuild, his frantic gang of poets and professors indite Hymns of Hate and blasphemous catch-words like "Gott strafe England"; but the Smithies and Shinies of the British army would never fail to cock a humorous eye at the vapourers, and say sarcastically, "Well, an' wot abart it?"