But different noises
get on different men's nerves, and, next to the scratching of a
slate-pencil, a window on the rattle or the distant slam-slam of a
door left ajar makes me craziest. You'd think a man out here would
get accustomed to anything in the way of racket. Not a bit of it!
Home on leave those particular sounds rasp me as badly as ever. . . .
Moreover I have rather an eye for scamped carpentry: learned it off
my father, going about the property with him. His own eye was a
hawk's for loose fences, loose slates, badly-hung gates, even a
broken sash-cord.
Foe's notions of furnishing, too, had always been bleak. He had
hung his few pictures in the wrong places, and askew at that.
He understood dining, though, and no doubt the dinner was good,
though I gave very little attention to it.
"Otty's hipped to-night," said Collingwood, over the coffee.
"Politics are all he can talk in these days. Wake up, Otty, and
don't sit thinking out a speech."
I woke up. "I don't need to think out a speech," said I. "After a
fortnight's campaigning a fellow can make speeches in his sleep.
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