Even the thought of it at the moment was unpleasant to me as bringing my neglected studies to my mind, so I hastily turned my attention once more to the French.
The boats and the sailors had now returned to their ships, having landed the invading hordes (which was the term we usually applied to the Gallic soldiers), who now seemed more bent on cooking than on conquering, on supping than on surprising.
We watched the erection of beams and bars over the huge fires; and the slinging on to the bars of great pots and pans of all sorts—mostly intimate friends of poor Nancy who watched all these proceedings with many a groan and warm ejaculation as she thought of all her wasted scrubbings in the back kitchen of Trehowel. The precise number of the men who landed that night on a bit (though remote) of Great Britain was fourteen hundred; of whom six hundred were regular troops, and eight hundred were convicts of the basest sort, described, indeed, in the pamphlets of the time as the sweepings of the gaols. Besides these, there were two women; and had the fourteen hundred been animated by the spirit which possessed these two of the weaker sex, the result might have been much more unpleasant to the Principality than it actually was.
The Welsh woman beside me was not by any means deficient in spirit either, it even sometimes took the form of temper, yet to my astonishment I heard the sound of sobs which could only proceed from her, as Llewelyn was hardly likely to relieve his feelings in this way.
“Oh, Master Dan, wherever is Davy?” she again asked. She called me “master” when she remembered what I was going to be, otherwise my father being only a small tradesman in Fishguard, I was more frequently called Dan. I do not think I have given any description of Ann George, boys do not, as a rule, think much of personal appearance; nor did I. My idea of Nancy had been chiefly connected with the peppermints she had been in the habit of giving me as a child; I thought her a person of a free and generous disposition. She was a tall, fine young woman of five and twenty, with dark hair and eyes (these last being dark grey not brown), decided but pretty eyebrows, a well-shaped nose, and rather large mouth which disclosed when she laughed or talked (which was frequently) handsome white teeth. In short, she was the type of a good-looking Welsh woman. She had also a healthy colour, a warm heart, and a splendid appetite. It was not very surprising that she had (or had had) two admirers.
I at once referred to this fact with a boy’s utter want of delicacy in matters of sentiment.
“What are you bothering about Davy for? I thought it was Jim you liked.”
“Don’t you ever say that fellow’s name to me again, Dan’el,” said Nancy with animation, her tears dried up and her eyes sparkling. “I hope never to hear of James Bowen again so long as I live.”
I whistled. “Was that because he got into trouble for horse-stealing? Why, as to that, Davy’s none too particular.”