Mrs. Tim of the Regiment

Mrs. Tim of the Regiment Read Online Free PDF

Book: Mrs. Tim of the Regiment Read Online Free PDF
Author: D. E. Stevenson
but have no time to think it out at present. What does it matter anyway, the children are pleasantly thrilled and everyone is pleased.
    Major Morley arrives to give his cinema show long before Banks has finished, and we stand in a corner together and watch the fun. ‘Banks is enjoying himself,’ Major Morley says.
    â€˜Everybody is,’ I reply vaguely, but with truth; and, indeed, there is not a dull or sulky person to be seen. Every face is shining, not only with the outward shininess of heat, and a good tea, but also with the inward glow of unselfconscious enjoyment.
    â€˜Simple people,’ Major Morley says thoughtfully. ‘I used to get a laugh out of this show – tongue in my cheek, you know – but I’ve grown wiser now. Awfully clean chaps soldiers, in spite of smells and bad language –awfully clean. Kind too. Look at old McInnes with that lame child of the Norries’ – and then think of him on the barrack square. He’s quite unselfconscious, that’s what it is. We’re too civilized – too afraid of what the next-door feller is going to say about us.’
    Banks is finished now and is helped down off the platform by willing hands. He is still talking, having got completely wound up – something about his reindeer, I think it is – but Banks’s hour is over and nobody is listening to him now.
    We clear away the wreck of the tree and everyone helps to put the chairs in rows for the movie performance. Major Morley sets up his apparatus and the lights are lowered. There are gasps of joy when Mickey Mouse appears on the screen, he is an old favourite. Then comes Charlie Chaplin in one of his old knockabout comedies, then a film for the little ones of comic monkeys riding on a train. After the monkeys Major Morley turns to me with a wicked grin which looks positively saturnine as he leans over the light of the projector in the dark hall and says, ‘Remember that day at Littlehampton?’
    I do remember it and say, ‘No! No! Don’t please!’ But the dreadful man has already started his infernal machine and I see myself coming towards me on the screen, clad in a bathing suit. There are wild cries of ‘Mrs. Christie, Mrs. Christie,’ as I wave my hand, and do a few steps of a dance in a perfectly idiotic manner. Betty and Bryan now appear running headlong down the sands, we chase each other madly, and then run into the sea where there is a lot of splashing. I emerge from the waves gasping like a codfish Tim now comes on the scene and we all take hands and dance a ‘jingo-ring’ in the water.
    Such torrents of applause greet this film and such shouts of delight and excitement that Major Morley shows it again, and once more I see myself as others see me a strange and not altogether gratifying experience.
    Major Morley looks at me and says gravely, ‘I wonder if Mary Pickford has ever had such an ovation.’
    Am still pondering this remark and trying to make up my mind whether he is laughing at me or not, when Sergeant Norrie stands up and calls for silence.
    â€˜I don’t wonder we are all clapping our ’ands off at this film,’ he says beaming round at the assembled company, ‘it’s because we all knows Mrs. Christie, isn’t it? Look at all she does for us and the interest she takes in the kiddies. Now we been told as how Mrs. Christie is going away, and we knows we’ll all miss her very badly because why? Because she always has a smile for everyone. Well, all I can say is we’ll look forward to seeing her and the captain back to the regiment some day, and we wishes them luck, and we shan’t forget them, and we hopes they won’t forget us. So now we’ll give three cheers for Mrs. Christie – Hip, hip, hurrah – ’
    Am absolutely overcome at this unexpected turn in events and stand there shaking like a jelly while the hall echoes and re-echoes with cheers. Major
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