“I cannot sleep,” she said softly; “I cannot sleep—I am not fit for a soldier’s wife!”
Alice shuddered. “Indeed, my lady, I’d as lief marry a butcher!” she cried, with such genuine horror and disgust that she moved her mistress to merriment.
“There, my girl, I told you so,” cried Lady Betty, “you were meant for that same parson.”
CHAPTER XII
MASTER AND MAN
MEANWHILE, under the same roof, but in far different quarters, the young Irishman called Richard Trevor was talking to his servant, the same who had led his horse up and down in the inn-yard under Lady Betty’s window. The room—an attic one—was scarcely ten feet square, and almost devoid of furniture; there was a pallet, a table, and two chairs; and a mat of braided straw at the foot of the master’s bed served for the man’s. A single candle burned low in its socket on the table, and here Richard Trevor sat with some writing materials before him, but he was not writing; he leaned back in his chair and listened, with his amused smile, to the glib talk of his attendant.
“Faix, sir, they be afther charging more here for a bite of mate or a dhrap of liquor thin in anny ither place in th’ kingdom,” said the man dolefully; “I’ve bin afther minding yer lordship’s insthructions about the money, an’ by the Powers, me stomach is loike to clave to me backbone.”
“We can starve respectably, however, Denis,” said his master smiling, and turning the contents of his purse out on the table; “a small sum for our needs, but it must serve,” he added, counting the money with a reckless air; “besides, one of us may die before we come to the end of it.”