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Sergeant-major Do-Your-Best of Darkington no. 1
Sergeantmajor DoYourBest of Darkington no 1 Author:William Booth Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. THE RAID ON THE FAIR. Now, after that meeting which I was telling you about in the last chapter, there was a good deal of talk in the Corps, I ... more »can tell you, and different people had different opinions, which I don't in no wise object to, as long as they keep on loving one another and doing their duty. But some thought one way, and some thought another, about the Captain's speech and his new ways of doing things. For instance, there's Jim Grumbleton; he's a very decent fellow. He earns pretty good money, and I must say he's always ready with a trifle for the good cause; but he's not much of a hand in a prayer meeting, you know; and he's never at a loss at doing a bit of fault-finding. Now, Jim, he works down at our place, and I tumbled over him as I went to the factory a morning or two after the meeting. "Well, Sergeant-Major," says he, "that new Captain of ours is a decent fellow, I fancy, andmeans well; but I can't see," says he, "how a lad like him's going to mend things much. What does he know ; and what can he do? Why, bless my soul, he's not much older than I am. Now, if you could get The General or the Commissioner to come this way and have ' a big go,' and get the Mayor into the chair, and rouse the town; or if the Chief of the Staff would come to Darkington, and hold one of those wonderful meetings of his, and show us Locals how we could raise the Corps, and fill the Hall, and get the money without us having to be at any trouble, that would be something like. "Anyhow," says he, "you won't find me among the rabble at the fair on Wednesday; I'm going to take my girl, who's not very well, down to Frampton-by-the-Sea, for a little change of air; besides," says he, "I'm not going to put myself about over the Corps for some time to come; I've tried ...« less