“Is his mother, here? Has he found his father?” asked Edward impatiently; while all the party drew nearer the soldier, anxious to learn the fate of their humble friend.
“Ay, his mother is in by there, poor cratur; but his father has been gone since the summer after the war, when the 40th was sent from Canada—where, God knows—there's none but he that made them can keep track of a British regiment: one year they are here with the setting sun, and then off to where he rises—shifting and changing like the waves of the sea, beating from one world to another; and I should know it by rason that I myself was fighting, and baiting gentaly under Wellington on the sunny side of the Pyrennees in one month, and the next comes an order and whips us off for Canada in the twinkling of an eye, among the indians and the yankees, who know nothing about fighting,” he concluded, glancing his eye at Mr. Morris, “according to the civil rules of war.”
“Poor, Mrs. Barton!” said Mrs. Sackville. “I am grieved at her disappointment, though I expected it.”
“Oh, do let us go in and see her,” said Julia.
“We will wait a moment, my dear,” replied her mother; “her little boy must have told her that we were here, and I think she will come out to us.”
“She'll not be right free to come before you,” said the soldier, “if, as I now partly suspect, you are the gentlemen and ladies that were so hospitable like to her.” The man now doffed his cap, and stood with it in his hand, with an expression of respect in his manner far different from the hostile air he had at first assumed.
“But, why not, my friend, come before us?” asked Mrs. Sackville. “I trust she has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Ashamed! no, thank God—it would be hard indeed if she had to bear the burthen of shame with her other misfortunes; but though a soldier's wife, she has an English spirit, and a proud one; and she says, while she has her health and her hands, she will never be seen asking charity; and that destitute is her condition, that as she said to-day, to make her case known to christian people, is asking charity of them.”
“Do, mother, let us go now and see her,” again interposed Julia.
“Stop, a moment, my love,” replied Mrs. Sackville; and then turning again to the soldier—“You say she is utterly destitute; but when she left us, she said she had a considerable sum of money.”