They listened in silence,
weighing with folded arms, appraising with chin in hand;
they were slow, equitable men.
"If we in England," Hesketh proceeded, "required a
lesson--as perhaps we did--in the importance of the
colonies, we had it; need I remind you? in the course of
the late protracted campaign in South Africa. Then did
the mother country indeed prove the loyalty and devotion
of her colonial sons. Then were envious nations compelled
to see the spectacle of Canadians and Australians rallying
about the common flag, eager to attest their affection
for it with their life-blood, and to demonstrate that
they, too, were worthy to add deeds to British traditions
and victories to the British cause."
Still no mark of appreciation. Hesketh began to think
them an unhandsome lot. He stood bravely, however, by
the note he had sounded. He dilated on the pleasure
and satisfaction it had been to the people of England
to receive this mark of attachment from far-away
dominions and dependencies, on the cementing of the
bonds of brotherhood by the blood of the fallen, on the
impossibility that the mother country should ever forget
such voluntary sacrifices for her sake, when, unexpectedly
and irrelevantly, from the direction of the cloakroom,
came the expressive comment "Yah!"
Though brief, nothing could have been more to the purpose,
and Hesketh sacrificed several effective points to hurry
to the quotation--
What should they know of England
Who only England know?
which he could not, perhaps, have been expected to forbear.
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