The morning was well advanced, and the sun made the gaunt and steep old tavern rise like a mammoth from the level lands, and filled its upper front rooms with golden wine of light, as Patty Cannon sat in one of them by a window near the piazza, and talked to Van Dorn, whom she had tenderly washed and re-dressed, and placed him in her own comfortable rocking-chair of rushes, with his feet raised, as all unaffected Americans like, and blanketed, upon a second chair.
Her woes and his relief made Patty social, yet tender, and the instincts of her sex had returned, to be petted and beloved.
"Oh, Captain," she said, fondly, "how clean and sweet you look, like my good man again. Don't be cross to me, Van Dorn! My heart is sad."
"Chito, Patty! chito! Fie! you sad? I like to see you saucy and defiant. Let us not repent! So Joe has left you?"
"With cruel curses. My daughter hates me, he says, and means to be a lady where I can't disgrace her. Oh, honey! to raise a child and have it hate an' despise you goes hard, even if I have been bad. There's nothing left me now but you, Van Dorn; oh, do not die!"
He coughed carefully, as if coughing was a luxury to be very mildly exerted, and wiped a little blood from his tongue and lip.
"I'll try not to die till I comfort you some, Márta delicióso! The ball is at my windpipe, and, when the blood trickles in, it makes me cough, and I must beware of emotions, the surgeon says, lest it drop into my lung and break a blood-vessel by some very spasmodic cough. So do not be too beautiful or I might perish."
He stroked his long yellow mustache with the diamond-fingered hand, and drew his velvet smoking-cap tight upon his silken curls, but he was too pale to blush as formerly, though he lisped as much, like a modest boy.
"Captain," the woman said, pleased to crimson, "you are so much smarter than me I'm afeard of you. Am I beautiful a little yet? Do I please you? I know you mock me."