“Well, Punch, most of my grumpiness has been on your account, and I will cheer up now. If I could only meet some one to talk to and understand us, so that we could find out where our people are, I wouldn’t care.”
“Well, never mind all that, and don’t care. I don’t. Here we are having a big holiday in the country. We have got away from the French, and we are not prisoners. I am all alive and kicking again, and I feel more than ever that I don’t care for anything now you are getting more and more well. There’s only one thing as would make me as grumpy as you are.”
“What’s that, Punch?”
“To feel that my wound was getting bad again. I say, you don’t think it will, do you?”
“No; why should I? It’s all healing up beautifully.”
“Then I don’t care for anything,” cried the boy joyously. “Yes, I do. I feel horrid wild sometimes to think they took away my bugle; leastways, I suppose they did. I never saw it no more; and it don’t seem natural not to have that to polish up. I have got a musket, though; and, I say, why don’t we have a day’s shooting, and knock over a kid or a pig?”
“Because it would be somebody’s kid or pig, and we should be hunted down worse than ever, for, instead of the French being after us for escaped prisoners, we should rouse the people against us for killing their property.”
“Yes, that would be bad,” said Punch; “but it would only be because we are hungry.”
“Yes, but the people wouldn’t study that.”
“Think they would knife us for it?” said the boy thoughtfully.