) At the same moment a walking patient, also a cockney, who had been
reading a newspaper, gave vent to a cry of feigned horror. "Boys!" he
announced, "it says 'ere there's a shortage of timber!"
Guffaws greeted this sally. Everyone saw the innuendo at once--everyone
except the clergyman, and when he grasped the point, that Ol' Chum
So-and-So was on the Danger List and a shortage of timber was supposed
to imply that he might be done out of a coffin, he was visibly shocked.
Perhaps he did not understand cockney humour.... However, one may add
that our irrepressible friend, at the moment of writing, is off the
Danger List (albeit only after a protracted struggle with the Enemy at
whom he jeered), and is now contriving to be as funny about life as he
was funny--and fearless--about Death.
I caught sight to-day of another cockney acquaintance of mine, whose
Christian name is Bill, trundling himself down the hospital drive in a
wheeled chair. Perched on the knee of his one leg, with its feet planted
on the stump which is all that is left of the other, was his child, aged
four. Beside him walked his wife, resplendent in a magenta blouse and a
hat with green and pink plumes.
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