As he listened, however, he did not forget the habit of soldierly
precaution, looking both behind and before. He looked behind and
computed the value of the carrier's load, divining the contents of the
brown-paper parcels and the portly hamper, and briefly setting down the
grand piano in the brand-new piano-case as 'difficult to get rid of'.
He looked before, and spied at the corner of the green lane a little
country public-house embowered in roses. 'I'll have a shy at it,'
concluded the military gentleman, and roundly proposed a glass. 'Well,
I'm not a drinking man,' said Harker.
'Look here, now,' cut in the other, 'I'll tell you who I am: I'm
Colour-Sergeant Brand of the Blankth. That'll tell you if I'm a drinking
man or not.' It might and it might not, thus a Greek chorus would have
intervened, and gone on to point out how very far it fell short of
telling why the sergeant was tramping a country lane in tatters; or even
to argue that he must have pretermitted some while ago his labours for
the general defence, and (in the interval) possibly turned his attention
to oakum.
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