“I thought you might be asleep.”
“I had a nimwinks a while ago. What’s now?”
The Captain was looking at the oddments on the table. He raised an eyebrow at Chirk. “Tonight’s haul? Didn’t you tell me you were turning to pound dealing?”
“So I will,” asserted Chirk, scooping up a handful of coins, and bestowing them in his pocket. “Just as soon as I get my fambles on this reward you tell me about, that is! In the meantime, Soldier, my windmill’s dwindled into a nutcracker, so I was bound to make a recover, else I’d have starved.”
John could not help laughing. “I wish you will not! I could lend you some blunt.”
“Thank ’ee, Soldier, breaking shins is what I don’t hold with!” said Chirk, whose morality, though eccentric, was rigid.
John smiled, but said nothing. A handsome gold watch lay on the table, and he picked it up. “You were fortunate, weren’t you? A well-breeched swell!”
“Getting winged ain’t my idea of good fortune!” said Chirk tartly. “If he’d had more than one barker, likely I’d be as dead as a herring by now, for he was a good shot: hit me while his prad was trying to bolt with him!”
“Jerry, was there an exchange of shots?” John asked, a little sternly.
“Ay, but I fired over his head, so you’ve no call to look at me like that, Soldier! I ain’t a man o’ violence!”