“Even us, the mob, the scum, can’t go on for ever; what do you say, John Pensioner?” the Corporal remarked.
“Truest word you’ve spoke this moon, Joe,” John Pensioner asserted, with a yawn for testimony.
“Where’ll we sleep, though, Corp’ral?” inquires my friend, Mr. George.
“There’s a hayloft top o’ this,” the Corporal replied; “pretty snug wi’ straw and fodder. Roomy, too; bed six like blazes. And warm, warm as that ’ere hussy of a ladyship will be in the other life, when the devil gives her pep’mint but no canary wine.”
“The very spot!” by general acclamation.
I could have cried out in my rage. This meant simply that we must be taken like a brace of pheasants in a snare. With the soldiers already established underneath there did not appear the remotest possibility of escape.
“The game’s up, madam,” the poor prisoner whispered to me, while I whispered curtly back again that I’d be better suited if he’d hold his tongue.
“But you, my dear lady, you?” says he, heedless of my sharp reply, “’twill never do for you to be discovered with me thus. Nay, you shall not. Rat me, but I have a plan! They are still underneath this trap, you see, assembled in a talk. I’ll drop down in their midst, scuffle with ’em, and while we are thus engaged, you can get from here into the yard, and slip back to the house unseen, and so leave them none the wiser.”
“Very pretty,” says I, “but how am I to get from here into the yard? It means a ten-feet drop upon weak ankles, for the ladder, you observe, is no longer there.”
“Confound it!” says he. “I’d forgot the ladder. Of course it is not there. What a fool I am! But ’oons! here’s a means to overcome it, madam. We’ll drop a truss of straw down, and that will break your fall if you leap upon it carefully.”