Full text of "TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston"
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that the less you think about what you &re doing the less there is to remember. ^Butley, with its unavoidable absence of liveliness, did make me to some extent ccrebrally aware of \\hat was happening to me. Through no fault of its own, it suffered from the disadvantage of being "just thesamc as ever"—except that all the life seemed to have gone out of it. And I was merely my old self, on final leave, with Aunt Evelyn doing her level best to make things bright and comfortable for me. The pathos of her efforts needs no emphasizing, though thinking of it gives me a heartache, even now. A strong smell of frying onions greeted my arrival. This, anyhow, gave me a chance to say how fond I was of that odour—as indeed I still am. "Steaks are quite difficult to get now, dear, so I do hope it's a tender one," she re- marked. And afterwards, while we were eating it, "Much as it disagrees with me I never can resist the merry onion." Her tired face was just about as merry as an onion. And the steak, of course, was tough. We hadn't much to tell one another either. Conversation about Slate- ford was restricted to my saying what a good place it was for golf, and there was an awkwardness even in telling her what a wonderful man Dr. Rivers was, since his name at once raised the spectre of my "pro- test", which neither of us desired to discuss. No doubt she had hoped and prayed that I might get a home-service job; but now she just accepted the fact that I'd got to go out again. Naturally, I didn't include Aunt Evelyn among the people on whom I wanted to get my own back by be- ing killed. But I knew that she disapproved of people being pacifists when there was a war to be won. So she suffered in silence; and if I said anything at all it