“How hungry you must be! How long is it since you have eaten?”
“Grey sent his servant into a village to buy some bread and cheese; we divided it when we parted, and it lasted me until this morning. Since then I have fasted.”
“Dear brother, I wish I could do more for you; but till Mr. Enderby goes, I cannot, for the soldiers are about the kitchen, and our maid, Deborah, talks too much to be trustworthy, though she is thoroughly faithful.”
“This is excellent fare,” said Edmund, eating with great relish. “And now tell me of yourselves. My mother is feeble and unwell, you say?”
“Never strong, but tolerably well at present.”
“So Walter said. By the way, Walter is a fine spirited fellow. I should like to have him with me if we take another African voyage.”
“He would like nothing better, poor fellow. But what strange things you have seen and done since we met! How little we thought that morning that it would be six years before we should sit side by side again! And Prince Rupert is kind to you?”
“He treats me like a son or brother: never was man kinder,” said Edmund, warmly. “But the children? I must see them before I depart. Little Lucy, is she as bold and pert as she was as a young child?”
“Little changed,” said Rose, smiling, and telling her brother the adventures at the dinner.
As cheerfully as might be they talked till Edmund had finished his meal, and then Rose begged him to let her examine and bind up the wound. It was a sword-cut on the right shoulder, and, though not very deep, had become stiff and painful from neglect, and had soaked his sleeve deeply with blood. Rose’s dexterous fingers applied the salve and linen she had brought, and she promised that at her next visit she would bring him some clean clothes, which was what he said he most wished for. Then she arranged the large horseman’s cloak, the hay, and his own mantle, so well as to form, he said, the most luxurious resting place he had seen since he left Dunbar; and rolled up in this he lay, his head supported on his hand, talking earnestly with her on the measures next to be taken for his safety, and on the state of the family. He must be hidden there till the chase was a little slackened, and then escape, by Bosham or some other port, to the royal fleet, which was hovering on the coast. Money, however—how was he to get a passage without it?