V. THE DEVICE OF THE DORMOUSE
When I had read the letter, I handed it up to Gabord without a word. A show of trust in him was the only thing, for he had enough knowledge of our secret to ruin us, if he chose. He took the letter, turned it over, looking at it curiously, and at last, with a shrug of the shoulders, passed it back.
“‘Tis a long tune on a dot of a fiddle,” said he, for indeed the letter was but a small affair in bulk. “I’d need two pairs of eyes and telescope! Is it all Heart-o’-my-heart, and Come-trip-in-dewy-grass—aho? Or is there knave at window to bear m’sieu’ away?”
I took the letter from him. “Listen,” said I, “to what the lady says of you.” And then I read him that part of her postscript which had to do with himself.
He put his head on one side like a great wise magpie, and “H’m—ha!” said he whimsically, “aho! Gabord the soldier, Gabord, thou hast a good heart—and the birds fed the beast with plums and froth of comfits till he died, and on his sugar tombstone they carved the words, ‘Gabord had a good heart.’”
“It was spoken out of a true spirit,” said I petulantly, for I could not bear from a common soldier even a tone of disparagement, though I saw the exact meaning of his words. So I added, “You shall read the whole letter, or I will read it to you and you shall judge. On the honour of a gentleman, I will read all of it!”
“Poom!” said he, “English fire-eater! corn-cracker! Show me the ‘good heart’ sentence, for I’d see how it is written—how GABORD looks with a woman’s whimsies round it.”
I traced the words with my fingers, holding the letter near the torch. “‘Yet he will not be rougher than his orders,’” said he after me, and “‘He did me a good service once.’”
“Comfits,” he continued; “well, thou shalt have comfits, too,” and he fished from his pocket a parcel. It was my tobacco and my pipe.