“With all my heart!” readily responded the representative of Maid Marian, “You’re welcome to a kiss. Take it.”
And, without waiting for Withers to fling his arms around her, or even meet her half-way, she craned her neck forward, and pressed her protruded lips against the rough cheek of the trooper!
“There now!” was the ejaculation that accompanied the loud smacking noise caused by the contact, “will that satisfy you?”
“No, dear Betsey; nor a hundred thousand of the same. With such sweetness a man would never be satisfied; but always awantin’ more. Ah! they may talk about them girls in Flanders. Gi’ me the kiss o’ an English lass. It’s got the jiniwine flavour about it.”
“All flattery! Come now! keep your promise—if you expect me to keep mine, when I come out again.”
“I’ll do it, sweet. But hark’ee! Don’t make no noise inside. If the guard corporal should come round and find what’s goin’ on, he’d change me from a sentry to a prisoner—in less time than it ’ud take to tell what’s o’clock. Ah! now; one more afore you go in?”
The girl, without hesitation, a second time delivered her cheek to be kissed by the ready lips of her soldier lover; and then, muttering something like a promise—to permit more than one repetition of the dose when she should come out again—the storeroom door was opened to her; and, without further interruption, she was admitted within the precinct of Holtspur’s prison.