THE SMITHY & NOBBY COLLECTION: 6 Novels & 90+ Stories in One Edition. Edgar Wallace

in the papers.

      Real, and Parliamentary

      “I don’t know what this new Army reform is going to do,” Smithy went on, philosophically, “but I don’t suppose it will do much. You see there are two armies. The Army that you and me know — fellers who wear uniforms an’ go walking out on Sundays with their best girls — the Army that marches an’ cleans its rifles an’ gets run in for making an improper reply to a noncommissioned officer. Then there’s another Army that nobody understands except civilians, and that’s all about money and Acts of Parliament and politics. The Act of Parliament army is the army they’re always reforming without our noticing it.”

      A feller of ours, a chap named Bertie, who was a billiard marker before he enlisted and sounds all his aitches, started giving me and Nobby his opinion about the Army the other day.

      “The fact is, my dear Clark,” he sez in his haw-haw voice, ‘economics and efficiency are not necessarily incom-somethlng-orother.”

      Nobby pulls him up sharp.

      “Talking about eco-what-d’ye-call-it, Bertie, I think it’s your turn to pay for the beer,” he sez.

      “I’m talking about Army reform,” sez Bertie.

      “And I’m talking about beer,” sez Nobby, “so don’t change the subject.”

       The End

      Smithy Aboard (1909)

       Table of Contents

       Dedication

       I. The Arms Store

       II. The Baptism of Stevens

       III. The Rotten Affair

       IV. The Bachelors’ Club

       V. Why “Featherweight Jackson” Enlisted

       VI. Nobby’s Love Story

       VII. The Chucajee Plate

       VIII. The Wanderer

       IX. The Fight

       X. The Miser

       XI. Nobby, Limited

       XII. An Act of War

       XIII. The Football Match

       XIV. Thatcher’s Brother

       XV. The Invention Craze

       XVI. Marshy, Detective

       XVII. The Ghost of the Brook

       XVIII. Smithy on Humour

       XIX. Pikey’s Luck

       XX. The Buglers

       XXI. Honour

       XXII. Sacrifice

       XXIII. A Suppressed Book

       XXIV. A Soldier and a Man