“Well, my lad,” cried Roger, sitting up on his pallet. “At penance again?”
“Roger,” replied Dicky, turning on him a round, rosy, solemn face, “you should not be so light-minded—though why should I reprove you? Am not I myself more given to idle pleasure than you?”
“And oh, I am a wicked fellow, and but little adapted to the priestly calling I covet, more through pride than piety I fear,” replied Roger, mimicking Dicky exactly; at which Dicky laughed and blushed and threw a cushion at him.
“Oh, Dicky,” continued Roger, still smiling, “how good it is to meet a thing as fresh as the daisies of the field, like you! You will forever be sinning and repenting like a boy. Let me see; you are now two and twenty, and I am four and twenty—heigh ho! ’Tis time to be rising and dressing, and then we will take a long walk in the forest I saw last night,—all our talks at Egremont were out-of-doors. Each of us has much to say and hear, and I think we understand one another better in the woods and fields.”
And into the woods and fields they went, deep and far; for St. Germains was seething like a pot with human beings, and it was hard to escape them, especially, if one was late from across the narrow seas.
Dicky, as usual, poured out his soul. He had studied hard at Clermont, where there were many English youths of the best families, until, his eyes giving out, he had been obliged to give up his books for a season. The fathers at Clermont had sent him to St. Germains, partly that he might be within reach of the Paris eye-surgeons, and partly for rest and recreation.
“I am still minded to be of the Society of Jesus. But I am afraid I am leading a sad life,” said Dicky. “I can’t get over my love of fiddling and dancing and playing; and this town does little else, it seems to me, but fiddle, and dance, and play. At the palace, ’tis different, but, it seems to me, the farther hope flies away of our return to dear England, the more the people frolic, and dance, and drink. And I tell you, Roger, my chief hope now is in the Duke of Berwick,—the Pike, they call him, because he is so tall, and thin, and straight; and I think the name suits him, because he does not bend to flattery, nor to anything ignoble. He is the only man who has the confidence of all, and is the favorite of the French King too. Now tell me, Roger, something of thyself.”
Roger told him all, not omitting Red Bess, and the way she had made his acquaintance, and the attack with the broom she had made on him.
“And you would not think, my lad, that any woman could wallop me,” he said, laughing and coloring a little. “But what with the surprise and the not knowing how to defend myself against a woman, and the girl’s amazing strength and spirit, I acknowledge I was handsomely drubbed; and it drove the devil out of me, and made me once more a gentleman. I will write to her this very day, for I have no better friend on earth than that poor girl.”
“And are you sure, Roger,” asked Dicky, anxiously, “that—that—you do not love this girl?”