"CUTHBERT."

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17104, 8 September 1917, Page 8

"CUTHBERT."

AN HONOURABLE NICKNAME.

Everyone in the Gramophone Company's worke (now on munitions), situated somewhere in England, called him " Cuthbert," but he only smiled —a queer little twisted smile, —and his bright blue eyes would twinkle afresh as ho turned again to his work. Together with one or two other men well over military age, and some 20 young girls, he was engaged upon making wooden cases for shells. An ingenious tool held the frame of the box together, a. jig was provided to ensure the correct drilling of the holes for the screws, wliile an Archimedean _ screwdriver reduced the work to childlike simplicity. " It's a trifle monotonous," he said, " but it's wax work." And the pride that rang in his "voice as he spoke was really touching

The tramp of heavy feet on the hard, white road beneath the windows of the workshops drowned for a brief spe.ll the busy hum of the many drills and the taptap of the hammer& *' Cuthbert" raised his smiling face from his work for a moment to watch the khakiclad lads go by. "Well," he said, with a, gentle eigh, "•we've each got out 'little bit" to do." As he picked up his screwdriver and returned again to hia work with renewed vigour, the little red-haired / minx, his "mate," at his side giggled. " We can't all fight, can we, Cuthbert?" she said, as they bent over the bench side by side. '" We arc fighting," he reminded her with quaint dignity. I stayed for a while at his side, and while he worked he talked to me. Oil, yes; he had been engaged upon this same work for somo long time now—nearly two years,—and he didn't think he'd be "called up" now. Previously he had been a gardener; now ho is a war worker, one of the grand industrial army "helping the boys ant there." No, ho'd never had a. day's illness in his life., He drank a little, smoked to excess, worked ajl the hours that a man could work, and on a Sunday evening he helped in the local " Y.M.OA." hut. He'd neither kith nor kin, he told me, but he'd adopted a lonely fighting soldier {torn, overseas. " And I write to him every day," 'he said, " and send him a parcel everv week. And when he comes home on leave he stays with me, and I try to give him a gay time that he will remember -when he gets back to the trenches." When I left him I was proud to have met " Cuthbert"; proud to have shafcen. him by the hand. Cuthberfs ago k 94-.—Daily Mail.