“Drink,” said she. “It's the same as they have upstairs, so it won't hurt you.”
The fellow needed no pressing. He took off half the contents of the bottle at a gulp, and then, fetching a long breath, stood staring at her.
“That's prime!”
“Is it? I dare say it is.” She had been looking at him with unaffected disgust as he drank. “Brandy is all you men understand.” Miles—still sucking in his breath—came a pace closer.
“Not it,” said he, with a twinkle in his little pig's eyes. “I understand something else, miss, I can tell yer.”
The tone of the sentence seemed to awaken and remind her of her errand in that place. She laughed as loudly and as merrily as she dared, and laid her hand on the speaker's arm. The boy—for he was but a boy, one of those many ill-reared country louts who leave the plough-tail for the musket, and, for a shilling a day, experience all the “pomp and circumstance of glorious war”—reddened to the roots of his closely-cropped hair.
“There, that's quite close enough. You're only a common soldier, Miles, and you mustn't make love to me.”
“Not make love to yer!” says Miles. “What did yer tell me to meet yer here for then?”
She laughed again.
“What a practical animal you are! Suppose I had something to say to you?”