“’Tarn’t no good. Old Frog-soups clears everything.”
“Yes,” said the woman, with a sigh, as she re-arranged her battered old straw bonnet cocked up as if it were a hat, and took off the old scarlet uniform tail coat she wore over her very clean cotton gown, before going to the pot, wooden spoon in hand, to raise the lid and give the contents a stir round.
“Oh, I say, Mother Beane, it does smell good! What’s in it?”
“Shoulder o’ goat,” said the woman.
“Yah! Don’t care much for goat,” said the boy. “Arn’t half so good as mutton.”
“You must take what you can get, Tom. Two chickens.”
“Why, that they ain’t. I see ’em: they was an old cock and hen as we chivied into that burnt house this mornin’, and Corp’ral shot one, and Mick Toole run his bay’net through the other. Reg’lar stringies.”
“Never mind. I’m cooking ’em to make ’em taste like chicken, and it’s time they were all back to mess. Which way did my old man go?”
“Climbed up yonder. Said he knowed there’d be a house up somewheres there.”
“And why didn’t you go with him, sir?” said Mrs Corporal Beane. “Might have found a melon or some oranges.”