Page 117 - English Expedition Class 6

it in the way they did irritated me. Th ere is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other people
sitting about doing nothing when I’m working.
Now, I’m not like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up
and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my
energetic nature. I can’t help it.
However, I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job than I had
thought it was going to be; but I got the bag fi nished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.
‘Ain’t you going to put the boots in?’ said Harris.
And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. Th at’s just like Harris. He couldn’t have
said a word until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of course. I opened the bag and packed the
boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my
toothbrush? I don’t know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve packed my toothbrush.
My toothbrush is a thing that haunts me when I’m travelling, and makes my life a misery.
I dream that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for
it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is
always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs
for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.
Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of course, I could not fi nd it.
7
I rummaged the things up into much the same state that they must have been before the world
was created, and when chaos reigned. Of course, I found George’s and Harris’s eighteen times over,
but I couldn’t fi nd my own. I put the things back one by one, and held everything up and shook it.
Th en I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.

7 rummaged: searched in a disorganized manner
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