“No, you don’t. You want to get just a little stronger, so as you can walk ten miles in a day.”
“Ten miles! Why, I used to do twenty easy.”
“So you will again, lad; but I mean in a night, for we shall have to lie up all day and march all night so as to keep clear of the enemy.”
“Then you mean for us to try and get out of this wretched hole?”
“I mean for us to go on tramp as soon as you are quite strong enough; and then you will think it’s a beautiful valley. Why, Punch, I have crept about here of a night while you have been asleep, so that I have got to know the place by heart, and I should like to have the chance of leading our fellows into places I know where they could hold it against ten times or twenty times their number of Frenchmen who might try to drive them out.”
“You have got to know that?” said Punch with a show of animation that had grown strange to the poor fellow.
“Yes,” cried Pen triumphantly.
“Well, then, all I have got to say is you waren’t playing fair.”
“Of course it wasn’t. Seeing you were so weak you couldn’t walk.”
“There now, you are laughing at a fellow; but you don’t play fair.”