“Faith, I'm not so young as I was. That guard-mountin' wears on the sole av the fut, and this”—he sniffed contemptuously at the brick verandah—“is as hard setting as standin'!”
“Wait a minute. I'll get the cushions out of my cart,” I said.
“Strewth—sofies! We're going it gay,” said Ortheris, as Terence dropped himself section by section on the leather cushions, saying prettily, “May you niver want a soft place wheriver you go, an' power to share utt wid a frind. Another for yourself? That's good. It lets me sit long ways. Stanley, pass me a poipe. Augrrh! An' that's another man gone all to pieces bekaze av a woman. I must ha' been on forty or fifty prisoners' gyards, first an' last, an' I hate ut new ivry time.”
“Let's see. You were on Losson's, Lancey's, Dugard's, and Stebbins's, that I can remember,” I said.
“Ay, an' before that an' before that—scores av thim,” he answered with a worn smile. “Tis betther to die than to live for thim, though. Whin Raines comes out—he'll be changin' his kit at the jail now—he'll think that too. He shud ha' shot himself an' the woman by rights, an' made a clean bill av all. Now he's left the woman—she tuk tay wid Dinah Sunday gone last—an' he's left himself. Mackie's the lucky man.”
“He's probably getting it hot where he is,” I ventured, for I knew something of the dead Corporal's record.
“Be sure av that,” said Terence, spitting over the edge of the verandah. “But fwhat he'll get there is light marchin'-ordher to fwhat he'd ha' got here if he'd lived.”
“Surely not. He'd have gone on and forgotten like the others.”
“Did ye know Mackie well, Sorr?” said Terence.
“He was on the Pattiala guard of honour last winter, and I went out shooting with him in an ekka for the day, and I found him rather an amusing man.”