“If it can’t be helped—it can’t. I been plenty hungry before this.”
“Me too,” murmured Bill.
An interval of silence, during which three men shivered and shook before the fire—a fire that had commenced to burn itself out. Red, angry embers blinked up at them.
“Your turn to gather more wood,” Bill informed Thomas.
Thomas scowled at the unpleasant imminence of this chilly duty and spat disgustedly into the lowering flames.
“Yuh better hurry,” implacably his partner spurred him on. “We’ll soon be freezin’ entirely. There ain’t enough heat here to warm a sparrow.”
Thomas grunted out an oath before he departed, purposely bumping against Bill as he lumbered past.
“Yuh can see the sort o’ disposition he’s got,” Bill complained to the policeman. “I been aputtin’ up with this sort o’ thing fer ten years now—ten years this comin’ March since we become partners.”
In spite of the fact that he was shivering, uncomfortable, worried, suffering untold agonies from his feet, the man in the frayed uniform smiled quietly to himself.
“Why don’t you break your partnership?” he suggested.