The times were too exciting for a lad of my age to sit with his toes under the table; my mother, too, was busily engaged in making preparations to receive the strangers who were quartered in our house, so as soon as supper was ended I fared forth into the street again to pick up scraps of intelligence, and try to find out the latest news.
I was too full of excitement to care to go to bed, and I found most of my fellow-townsmen were of my mind in this matter. I turned in first at Jemima Nicholas’s house to see how she and her niece were getting on after their novel experience of warlike tactics on a large scale. Jemima, an immensely powerful woman, seemed only sorry that they had not come to close quarters with the enemy: she was truly a Celtic Amazon who took a pleasure in fighting for fighting’s sake.
Nancy, to my surprise, seemed to have been indulging in the luxury of tears.
“What on earth is the matter with you, Nan?” I asked, with unfeeling openness. “Your eyes are quite red.”
Nancy shot a glance of anger at me from the orbs in question, but vouchsafed no answer.
“Why, don’t you know,” interposed Jemima, “that her young man was wounded in the fight up there just now?”
“D’you mean Davy Jones?” I asked. “Oh, I knew one of the sailors got shot; but I didn’t know which it was; I never thought of inquiring.”
“You unfeeling young heathen!” burst out Nancy. “But there, it’s no good talking; boys have no more heart than cabbages.”
“A cabbage has a heart, Nancy,” I retorted.