Not that there was much time for mourning in the outpost, since the long months of the siege were drawing to a close. Then came the final assault, the ten days of struggle within the city, until even the Palace was ours, and the army which had taken it prepared to move on elsewhere. It was the evening before the start, and Craddock, who, as a volunteer, had more liberty to go and come as he chose, went down to the now deserted outpost to smoke a last pipe, and think over the past with the pleasing melancholy which goes so admirably with tobacco.
"Poor Joey Banks!" he thought, as memory came round to that episode, "'im an' 'is female gaze. I shan't never forget 'em."
I will tell the rest in Craddock's own words; they suit it.
"I look up, sir, an' you might 'ave knock me over with a ninepin, for there was Joey, lookin' as spry as spry. 'Joey,' says I, takin' it as one does, sir, for all them sayin's of ninepins and feathers and such like, quite calm, 'so you're not dead?'
"'Na! lad,' he says back, as calm like. 'Aw'm goān t' be married, an' a've coom t' get t' best man.'
"It took me all of a 'eap, sir, sorter Malachi an' the minor prophets, sir, as things does sometimes. 'Joey, my boy,' I says, 'you ain't never goin' to marry a female gaze?' says I.
"But 'e was, sir. Ter cut a long story short, she'd found 'im an' nursed him. An' we all knows wot that means, white or black, sir. 'E'd a 'eap to tell--though Lord knows where 'e got it, for 'e didn't know no 'Industani to speak of, sir--about 'ow she lived in quite a fine 'ouse an' 'ow her father an' brothers 'ad bin killed, so as she kinder 'adn't no choice but gazing. But I wasn't to be took with chaff, so I says to 'im quite solemn like, 'Afore I'm best man, I've got to know, Joey--is she square?' 'E just looked at me, sir, as if I were slush.
"'She'd gotten ma hair in t' buzzum,' he said, an' said no moor.
"So I gave my word to be best man, sir, an' 'e sighed like as a weight was took off him. 'Then coom awa' wi' me t' passon,' says 'e, 'fur I'm goān t' be marrid afoor aw goes with t' army to-morer.'
"'Then you've 'ad the banns cried,' says I, for my father bein' bell-ringer same as give me my name in 'oly baptism, sir, I was up to them dodges. 'E give me a real Apollyon frown, sir.