'He's like a soldier--a
General,' she said to anybody who cared to listen, and she said it so
loudly that many did listen. But she did not care. She stood apart
from the others, staring as though it were a railway accident. This
tall figure of a cousin she could fit nowhere as yet into her limited
scheme of life. She admired him intensely. Yet Daddy laughed and
chatted with him as if he were nothing at all! She kept outside the
circle, wondering about his socks and underclothes. His beard was much
neater and better trimmed than her father's. At least no crumb or bit
of cotton was in it.
But Jimbo felt no awe. After a moment's hesitation, during which the
passers-by butted him this way and that, he marched straight up and
looked him in the face. He reached to his watch-chain only.
'I'll be your sekrity, too,' he announced, interrupting Daddy's
foolishness about 'this is my youngest lad, Rogers.' Youngest lad
indeed!
And Henry Rogers then stooped and kissed the lot of them. One after
the other he put his big arms round them and gave them a hug that was
like the hug of a bear standing on its hind legs. They took it, each
in his own way, differently. Jimbo proudly; Monkey, with a smacking
return kiss that somehow conveyed the note of her personality--
impudence; but Jane Anne, with a grave and outraged dignity, as though
in a public railway station this kind of behaviour was slightly
inappropriate.
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