“Ah, ça! keep your money, my handsome lad. We can afford to give you something to eat and drink, without robbing Maitre Jacques of his breakfast. Where did you meet my girl?”
“About a mile from here,” said the Lieutenant.
“You are a stranger to these parts,” said the dame, dismissing her anxious audience with a shake of her apron; “come with me into the house.”
“Lieutenant Thornton and Bill followed the dame into the kitchen of the farm-house, where a huge iron pot was boiling over a roaring log fire in a wide chimney, and a girl stirring the contents with a large ladle. The smell from the steam made Bill Saunders’s eyes water, and, forgetting his being a dummy, he rubbed his huge hands, saying:
“My eyes, here’s a smell!” and then seeing by the look of our hero that he had committed an indiscretion, for the old dame looked at him in surprise, he coughed with such vehemence as to startle a curly-haired dog enjoying himself at the fire out of all propriety, for he flew at Bill instantly.
“Eh!” said Dame Moret, “what does your comrade say?” looking into Lieutenant Thornton’s face.
“He’s a Dutchman,” said our hero, scarcely able to keep from laughing at the grotesque efforts Bill was making to cover his mistake.
“Dutchman!” said the old dame; “very like English. I had a noble lady once for a mistress,” and the dame sighed, “and she was English, though her second husband was a Frenchman. But sit down; I love the English, and if he or you either are English, you are quite safe with me. To tell the truth, though you do speak the language very well, you don’t look like Frenchmen, and your big comrade seems like a man squeezed into a boy’s clothes.”
“Well, dame,” returned our hero, struck forcibly by the woman’s words, “I will not deceive you; we are English.”
“Ah! monsieur, you will upset the pot,” said the dame, turning round, for Bill seeing the girl trying to lift the heavy utensil, and the girl being a very good-looking one, went to help her, instigated by the cravings of his stomach, which prompted a speedy replenishing. But Bill very scientifically finished the operation, put the logs together, and laughing, gave the girl a kiss, for which he received a box in the face by the laughing and by no means displeased damsel, for Bill was a very handsome specimen of an English tar.