"So I was; and they hung him the week after we were married. I went and saw him hung, and I've never seen a better hanging since. No, that I haven't. Times is changed since then."
"But you ain't changed. I wonder you don't marry again, a wild young thing like you."
"I ain't a marrying sort--not now I ain't. I've had ten of them, and that's quite enough for me."
"Lor', no! What is ten?"
"Ten's quite enough for one young woman, and when you've been two hundred and ninety times in prison a woman don't feel much like marrying again. It takes it out of her, it do."
Bertie had ended his meal. The warmth and the food had given the finishing touch to his previous fatigue; his head was already nodding on his breast. He heard the old woman talking as in a dream. Ten husbands! two hundred and ninety times in jail! Were they part of his nightmare, the things which he heard her say?
"Hollo, Ikey, you're blinking! Now then, mother, where are you going to put my pal? Can't you find a place where he can be alone?"
Had Bertie been sufficiently wide awake he would have seen the speaker wink at the old woman.
"There's only the captain's room."
The woman's suggestion seemed to startle Freddy, and to set him thinking.