“I did not, Morgan, and I shouldn’t have thought of such a thing. It was all your doing.”
“Steady in the ranks, my lass. Be fair. I’ll own to half of it, but you know you were just as bad as me.”
“I was not, sir, indeed,” cried Sarah, beginning to sob. “He deluded me into it, and almost forced me to say yes.”
“Man’s dooty,” said Morgan, dryly.
“What!” cried my father, smiling; “have you two gone and been married?”
“Stop there, sir, please, begging your pardon,” said Morgan; “I declare to gootness, you couldn’t make a better guess than that.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Sarah, who was very red in the face before, but scarlet now; and as I sit down and write all this, as an old man, everything comes back to me as vividly as if it were only yesterday—for though I have forgotten plenty of my later life, all this is as fresh as can be—“I beg your pardon, sir, but as you know all the years I have been in your service, and with my own dear angel of a mistress—Heaven bless her!”
“Amen,” said my father, and, stern soldier as he was, I saw the tears stand thick in his eyes, for poor Sarah broke down and began to sob, while Morgan turned his face and began to blow his nose like a trumpet out of tune.
“I—I beg your pardon for crying, sir, and it’s very weak, I own,” continued Sarah, after a few minutes’ interval, during which I hurriedly put my arm round her, and she dabbed down and kissed me, leaving my face very wet; “but you know I never meant to be married, but when Morgan comes to me and talks about what I was thinking about—how you and that poor darling motherless boy was to get on in foreign abroad, all amongst wild beasts and savages, and no one to make a drop o’ gruel if you had colds, or to make your beds, or sew on a button, and your poor stockings all in holes big enough to break any decent woman’s heart, and to Master George’s head—”
“I can wash my own head well enough now, Sarah,” I said.