“Oh, I thought you were of opinion that nothing was too bad——”
“Hold hard!” said Lew. “If you mean to carry on any longer like a bear with a sore head, I propose we go home.”
“It’s as you like,” Robert said.
“Bob,” said the other, “mutual danger draws fellows together: it’s drawn you and me together scores of times. We’re lost, or at all events I’m lost, if it turns out different now.”
“Do you think I’m going to give you up?” said Rob, almost with a sneer.
“No, I don’t,” said Lew, calmly. “You haven’t the spirit. Your mammy would do it like a shot, if it wasn’t for—other things.”
“What other things?” cried Rob, fiercely.
“Well, because she’s got a heart—rather bigger than her spirit, and that’s saying a great deal: and because she believes like an Arab—and that’s saying a great deal too—in her bread and salt.”
“Look here!” cried Rob, looking about him for a reason, “I don’t mean to stand any longer the way you speak of my mother. Whatever she is, she is my mother, and I’ll not listen to any gibes on that subject—least of all from you.”
“What gibes? I say her heart is greater even than her spirit. I might say that”—and here Lew made something like the sign of the Cross, for he had queer fragments of religion in him, and sometimes thought he was a Roman Catholic—“of the Queen of heaven.”