The thing that makes Oswald feel most that, perhaps, the whole thing was a beastly sell, was that we didn’t see any wounded. But he tries not to think of this. And if he goes into the army when he grows up, he will not go quite green. He has had experience of the arts of war and the tented field. And a real colonel has called him ‘Comrade-in-Arms’, which is exactly what Lord Roberts called his own soldiers when he wrote home about them.
CHAPTER 14. ALBERT’S UNCLE’s GRANDMOTHER; OR, THE LONG-LOST
The shadow of the termination now descended in sable thunder-clouds upon our devoted nobs. As Albert’s uncle said, ‘School now gaped for its prey’. In a very short space of time we should be wending our way back to Blackheath, and all the variegated delightfulness of the country would soon be only preserved in memory’s faded flowers. (I don’t care for that way of writing very much. It would be an awful swot to keep it up--looking out the words and all that.)
To speak in the language of everyday life, our holiday was jolly nearly up. We had had a ripping time, but it was all but over. We really did feel sorry--though, of course, it was rather decent to think of getting back to Father and being able to tell the other chaps about our raft, and the dam, and the Tower of Mystery, and things like that.
When but a brief time was left to us, Oswald and Dicky met by chance in an apple-tree. (That sounds like ‘consequences’, but it is mere truthfulness.) Dicky said--
‘There’s one thing,’ Dickie said, ‘that beastly society. We don’t want that swarming all over everything when we get home. We ought to dissolve it before we leave here.’
Oswald--‘Right you are. I always said it was piffling rot.’
Oswald--‘Let’s call a council. But don’t forget we’ve jolly well got to put our foot down.’
Dicky assented, and the dialogue concluded with apples.
The council, when called, was in but low spirits. This made Oswald’s and Dicky’s task easier. When people are sunk in gloomy despair about one thing, they will agree to almost anything about something else. (Remarks like this are called philosophic generalizations, Albert’s uncle says.) Oswald began by saying--
‘We’ve tried the society for being good in, and perhaps it’s done us good. But now the time has come for each of us to be good or bad on his own, without hanging on to the others.’