“Such a set of disreputable ragamuffins as they looked, Miss Fielding! I heard afterwards that some of them were denied and driven away from their own doors, and had some trouble before they could make themselves recognized by their own landladies.”
“Served them right, the cowards! It would have served them right if they had been made to wear those tatters for the rest of their lives!”
“I think you are hard on them, Miss Fielding. What could seventeen men do against two hundred guerrillas?”
“They could have died,” said Elfie, ruthlessly.
“Yes, but, Miss Fielding, the guerrillas didn’t want to kill them; they only wanted to take their victuals and clothes and dance with their partners.”
“They could have resisted, and got their heads broken, as you did, my brave Mim! They could have proved their manhood in that way, if they had had any manhood to prove. But I suppose they really had not. You were the only man among them, Mim, dear,” said Elfie.
Again little Mim was overwhelmed and dumbfounded.
“Oh lor!” sighed Miss Suzy to herself—“Oh dear! Now they’re getting on dangerous ground again. I know, if I wasn’t in the room, she’d offer to marry him out’n gratitude, and he’d accept, and then there! But I’ll take care not to leave the room while she is in it. If he makes an excuse to get rid of me by asking me to go and fetch anything, I’ll just knock on the floor for some one to come up and bring it. For stir from this room I will not!” she grimly resolved.
Apparently little Mim also thought that the conversation was getting upon dangerous ground, for again he diverted it from himself.
“I don’t know, after all, but what it would have been better if they had resisted the exchange of clothing and got broken heads rather than what they did get. Though indeed they might have got both, for that matter.”