An Old Soldier'
I had been watching him for a while when the tramp eventually pepped his bits of rag and other odds and ends into his sack and came along to speak to me. There was something about him I didn't like. "Old soldier, sir," he said and mentioned almost every bloody battle of the First World War. He straightened up as he recited them. I believed him when he said he was an old soldier and when he asked for the price of a ' bite' I suspected that he was more thirsty than hungry. I gave him a shilling and he spat on it and put it in his pocket. "It's a long way to X," he said after a minute. "I got a sister lives in X. I'll be sure of a job there." I waited for him to continue. "1 suppose you couldn't make it two shillin' ? " I couldn't make it two
shillings. I was sorry I had even given him one, for in the afternoon I saw him again working the same stretch of road. He was talking to a man, drawing in his chin and putting his shoulders back. I could almost hear him saying it, "Old soldier, sir," and he was—one sort of old soldier—I was sure of that.
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