When he saw us he came close to the wall, and touched his cap, as I have said, and remarked—
‘Excuse me interrupting of your sports, young gentlemen and ladies, but if you could so far oblige as to tell a labouring man the way to the nearest pub. It’s a dry day and no error.’
‘The “Rose and Crown” is the best pub,’ said Dicky, ‘and the landlady is a friend of ours. It’s about a mile if you go by the field path.’
‘Lor’ love a duck!’ said the tramp, ‘a mile’s a long way, and walking’s a dry job this ‘ere weather.’ We said we agreed with him.
‘Upon my sacred,’ said the tramp, ‘if there was a pump handy I believe I’d take a turn at it—I would indeed, so help me if I wouldn’t! Though water always upsets me and makes my ‘and shaky.’
We had not cared much about tramps since the adventure of the villainous sailor-man and the Tower of Mystery, but we had the dogs on the wall with us (Lady was awfully difficult to get up, on account of her long deer-hound legs), and the position was a strong one, and easy to defend. Besides the tramp did not look like that bad sailor, nor talk like it. And we considerably outnumbered the tramp, anyway.
Alice nudged Oswald and said something about Sir Philip Sidney and the tramp’s need being greater than his, so Oswald was obliged to go to the hole in the top of the wall where we store provisions during sieges and get out the bottle of ginger-beer which he had gone without when the others had theirs so as to drink it when he got really thirsty. Meanwhile Alice said—
‘We’ve got some ginger-beer; my brother’s getting it. I hope you won’t mind drinking out of our glass. We can’t wash it, you know—unless we rinse it out with a little ginger-beer.’
‘Don’t ye do it, miss,’ he said eagerly; ‘never waste good liquor on washing.’
The glass was beside us on the wall. Oswald filled it with ginger-beer and handed down the foaming tankard to the tramp. He had to lie on his young stomach to do this.