'I couldn' make nothin' of it, sir,' he would say with rueful candour. 'So they couldn' make nothin' o' me.'
His simplicity was a joy, though he was sometimes simple to a fault. One morning I caught him draining our tea-pot as a loving-cup: matted head thrown back, brawny elbows lifted, and the spout engulfed in his honest maw: a perfect silhouette, not to be destroyed by a sound, much less a word of protest, even had we not been devoted to our gentle savage. But one of us did surreptitiously attend to the spout before tea-time. And once before my eyes his ready lips sucked the condensed-milk off our tin-opener before plunging it into a tin of potted meat. He had a moustache of obsolete luxuriance, I remember with a shudder in this connection; but the last time I saw him the moustache was not.
'You see, sir,' explained Gabriel, regretfully, 'I had a cold, an' it arl ...'
I hope my muscles were still under due control. To know our Gabriel was to perish rather than hurt his feelings; for he had the softest heart of his own, and in Oxfordshire a wife and children to share its affections with his ewes and lambs. 'An' I think a lot on 'em, too, sir,' said Gabriel, when he showed me the full family group (self in uniform) done on his last 'leaf.' Really a sweet simpleton, even when (as I was nearly forgetting) he announced a brand-new Brigadier-General, who had honoured me with a visit, as 'A gen'leman to see you, sir!'
The only man of us who had the heart to tell the angelic Gabriel off was his brother orderly, a respectable and patriotic Huish, if such a combination can be conceived. Our Mr. Huish was the gentleman who always said it wanted five minutes to the 'alf-hour when it wanted at least ten, and too often sped the last of our lingering guests with insult into outer darkness. Like his prototype he was a fiery little Londoner, with a hacking cough and a husky voice ever rising to a shout in his dealings with bovine Gabriel. There was nothing of the beasts of the field about our Huish; he was the terrier type, and more than true to it in his fidelity to his temporary masters. At us he never snarled. His special province was the boiler stove; he was generally blacked up to the red rims of his eyes, like a seaside minstrel, and might have been collecting money in his banjo as we saw him first of a dim morning. But the instrument was only our frying-pan carried at arm's length, and our approval of an unconscionable lot of rashers all the recognition he required. 'W'en I 'as plenty I likes to give plenty,' was his disreputable watchword in these matters. I am afraid he was not supposed to cook for us at all.