“You should have seen me a short while ago, sir! I’m getting on.”
Lying by his side, on a piece of paper, was a thick slice, doubled, of bread-and-butter, that he must have brought with him. He broke a piece off, and ate it.
“You look hungry, Charley.”
“That’s the worst of it, sir; I’m always hungry,” he answered, and his tone from its eagerness was quite painful to hear, and his eyes grew moist, and the hectic spread on his cheeks. “It is the nature of the complaint, I’m told: and poor mother was the same. I could be eating and drinking every hour, sir, and hardly be satisfied.”
“Come along to the inn, and have some tea.”
“No, sir; no, thank you,” he said, shrinking back. “I answered your remark thoughtlessly, sir, for it’s the truth; not with any notion that it would make you ask me to take anything. And I’ve got some bread-and-butter here.”
Going indoors, I told them to serve him a good tea, with a big dish of bacon and eggs, or some relishing thing of that sort. Whitney came in and heard me.
“You be hanged, Johnny! We are not going in for all that, here!”
“It’s not for us, Bill; it’s for that poor old scout, Charley. He’s as surely dying as that you and I are talking. Come and look at him: you never saw such an object. I don’t believe he gets enough to eat.”
Whitney came, and did nothing but stare. Charley went indoors with a good deal of pressing, and we saw him sit down to the feast. Whitney stayed; I went out-of-doors again.