. The war in the air, and particularly how Mr. Bert Smallways fared while it lasted . by a glimpse of apartly-eaten swede, and was still telling his story infragments and parentheses, when he discovered be-hind the counter a yellow and forgotten noteaddressed to himself. ** Whats this? he said, andfound it was a year-old note from Edna. Shecame ere, said Tom, like one who recalls a trivialthing, arstin for you and arstin us to take er was after the battle and settin Clapham Riseafire. I was for takin er in, but Jessica wouldntave it — and so she borrowed five shillings ofme quiet like
. The war in the air, and particularly how Mr. Bert Smallways fared while it lasted . by a glimpse of apartly-eaten swede, and was still telling his story infragments and parentheses, when he discovered be-hind the counter a yellow and forgotten noteaddressed to himself. ** Whats this? he said, andfound it was a year-old note from Edna. Shecame ere, said Tom, like one who recalls a trivialthing, arstin for you and arstin us to take er was after the battle and settin Clapham Riseafire. I was for takin er in, but Jessica wouldntave it — and so she borrowed five shillings ofme quiet like and went on. I dessay shes toleyou She had, Bert found. She had gone on, she saidin her note, to an aunt and uncle who had a brick-field near Horsham. And there at last, after an-other fortnight of adventurous journeying, Bertfound her. §5 When Bert and Edna set eyes on one anotherthey stared and laughed foolishly, so changed theywere, and so ragged and surprised. And then theyboth fell weeping. Oh! Bertie, boy! she cried. Youve come—youve come! and put out her arms and stag-. oh! BERTIE, BOY. SHE CRIED, YOuVE COME ! , I >> \Tofecc p. 364 THE GREAT COLLAPSE 365 gered. I told im. He said hed kill me if I didntmarry him. But Edna was not married, and when presentlyBert could get talk from her she explained the taskbefore him. That little patch of lonely agriculturalcountry had fallen under the power of a band ofbullies led by a chief called Bill Gore who hadbegun life as a butcher boy and developed into aprize-fighter and a professional sport. They hadbeen organized by a local nobleman of formereminence upon the turf, but after a time he had dis-appeared, no one quite knew how, and Bill hadsucceeded to the leadership of the countryside, andhad developed his teachers methods with consider-able vigour. There had been a strain of advancedphilosophy about the local nobleman, and his mindran to improving the race and producing theOver-Man, which in practice took the form of
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