"Business as usual," and
they nodded.
But as the days passed it wasn't all right. Kitchener began to call
for his army. Belgium was invaded. We began to hear about atrocities.
There were rumours of defeat, which ceased to be rumours, and of grey
hordes pressing towards Paris. It began to dawn on the most optimistic
of us that the little British Army--the Old Contemptibles--hadn't gone
to France on a holiday jaunt.
The sternness of the hour was brought home to me by one obscure
incident. Straggling across Trafalgar Square in mufti and commanded by
a sergeant came a little procession of recruits. They were roughly
dressed men of the navy and the coster class. All save one carried
under his arm his worldly possessions, wrapped in cloth, brown-paper
or anything that had come handy. The sergeant kept on giving them the
step and angrily imploring them to pick it up. At the tail of the
procession followed a woman; she also carried a package.
They turned into the Strand, passed by Charing Cross and branched off
to the right down a lane to the Embankment. At the point where they
left the Strand, the man without a parcel spoke to the sergeant and
fell out of the ranks. He laid his clumsy hand on the woman's arm; she
set down on the pavement the parcel she had been carrying. There they
stood for a full minute gazing at each other dumbly, oblivious to the
passing crowds. She wasn't pleasing to look at--just a slum woman with
draggled skirts, a shawl gathered tightly round her and a mildewed
kind of bonnet.
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