"All right. I'll bring you a bundle of them, and you can do your own
selecting."
Out in the corridor the nurse said: "I couldn't hold him. But he'll be
easier now that he's got the questions off his mind. He will have to be
humoured a lot. That's one of the characteristics of head wounds."
"What do you think of him?"
"He seems to be gentle and patient; and I imagine he's hard to resist
when he wants anything. Winning, you'd call it. I suppose I mustn't ask
who he really is?"
"No. Poor devil. The fewer that know, the better. I'll be home round
three."
Once in the street, Cutty was besieged suddenly with the irresistible
desire to mingle with the crowd over in the Avenue, to hear the military
bands, the shouts, to witness the gamut of emotions which he knew would
attend this epochal day. Of course he would view it all from the aloof
vantage of the historian, and store away commentaries against future
needs.
And what a crowd it was! He was elbowed and pushed, jostled and trod
on, carried into the surges, relegated to the eddies; and always
the metallic taptap of steel-shod boots on the asphalt, the bayonets
throwing back the radiant sunshine in sharp, clear flashes. The keen,
joyous faces of those boys. God, to be young like that! To have come
through that hell on earth with the ability still to smile! Cutty felt
the tears running down his cheeks. Instinctively he knew that this was
to be his last thrill of this order. He was fifty-two.
"Quit your crowding there!" barked a voice under his chin.
"Sorry, but it's those behind me," said Cutty, looking down into a
florid countenance with a raggedy gray moustache and a pair of blue eyes
that were blinking.
"I'm so damned short I can't see anything!"
"Neither can I."
"You could if you wiped your eyes."
"You're crying yourself," declared Cutty.
"Blinking jackass! Got anybody out there?"
"All of 'em."
"I get you, old son of a gun! No flesh and blood, but they're ours all
the same. Couple of old fools; huh?"
"Sure pop! What right have two old codgers got here, anyhow? What
brought you out?"
"What brought you?"
"Same thing."
"Damn it! If I could only see something!"
Cutty put his hands upon the shoulders of this chance acquaintance and
propelled him toward the curb. There were cries of protest, curses,
catcalls, but Cutty bored on ahead until he got his man where he could
see the tin hats, the bayonets, and the colours; and thus they stood for
a full hour. Each time the flag went by the little man yanked off his
derby and turned truculently to see that Cutty did the same.