“Perhaps, Punch, if I had not been taken.”
“Well, then, why didn’t you try?”
“Well, we have had that over times enough,” said Pen quietly, “and I think you know.”
“Course I do,” said the boy, changing his tone; “only this wound, and being so hungry, do make me such a beast. If it had been you going on like this, lying wounded here, and it was me waiting on you, and feeding you, and tying you up, I should have been sick of it a week ago, and left you to take your chance.”
“No, you wouldn’t, Punch, old chap; it isn’t in you,” said Pen, “so we won’t argue about that. I only want you to feel that I have done everything I could.”
“’Cept cutting off and leaving me to take my chance. You haven’t done that.”
“No, I haven’t done that, Punch.”
“And I suppose you ain’t going to,” said the boy, “and I ought to tell you you are a fool for your pains.”
“But you are not going to do that, Punch.”
“No, I suppose not; and I wish I wasn’t such a beast—such an ungrateful brute. It is all that sore place; and it don’t get no better. But, I say, why don’t you go out straight and find the first lot of Frenchies you can, and say to them like a man, ‘Here, I give myself up as a prisoner’?”