"Are you asleep, Jackson?"
"Who's that?"
"Me--Jellicoe. I can't get to sleep."
"Nor can I. I'm stiff all over."
"I'll come over and sit on your bed."
There was a creaking, and then a weight descended in the neighbourhood
of Mike's toes.
Jellicoe was apparently not in conversational mood. He uttered no word
for quite three minutes. At the end of which time he gave a sound
midway between a snort and a sigh.
"I say, Jackson!" he said.
"Yes?"
"Have you--oh, nothing."
Silence again.
"Jackson."
"Hullo?"
"I say, what would your people say if you got sacked?"
"All sorts of things. Especially my pater. Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. So would mine."
"Everybody's would, I expect."
"Yes."
The bed creaked, as Jellicoe digested these great thoughts. Then he
spoke again.
"It would be a jolly beastly thing to get sacked."
Mike was too tired to give his mind to the subject. He was not really
listening. Jellicoe droned on in a depressed sort of way.
"You'd get home in the middle of the afternoon, I suppose, and you'd
drive up to the house, and the servant would open the door, and you'd
go in. They might all be out, and then you'd have to hang about, and
wait; and presently you'd hear them come in, and you'd go out into the
passage, and they'd say 'Hullo!'"
Jellicoe, in order to give verisimilitude, as it were, to an otherwise
bald and unconvincing narrative, flung so much agitated surprise into
the last word that it woke Mike from a troubled doze into which he had
fallen.
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