"True, Jemmie, my own," responded Dame Bottles. "But there are so many rogues abroad that you must forgive your old mother if she grow often affrighted that her good Jemmie has been misled." She turned to me. "Pardon, my good gentleman," she said almost in tears. "Ye little know what it is to be the mother of a high-spirited boy."
"I can truthfully say that I do not, Dame Bottles," said I, with one of my father's French bows. She was immensely pleased. Any woman may fall a victim to a limber, manly, and courteous bow.
Presently we sat down to a supper of plum-stew and bread. Bottles had washed the blood from his face and now resembled an honest man.
"You may think it strange, sir," said Dame Bottles with some housewifely embarrassment, "that a highwayman of such distinction that he has had written of him in Bristol six ballads—"
"Seven," said the highwayman.
"Seven in Bristol and in Bath two."
"Three," said the highwayman.
"And three in Bath," continued the old woman. "You may think it strange, sir, that a highwayman of such distinction that he has had written of him in Bristol seven ballads, and in Bath three, is yet obliged to sit down to a supper of plum-stew and bread."
"Where is the rest of that cheese I took on last Michaelmas?" demanded Bottles suddenly.
"Jemmie," answered his mother with reproach, "you know you gave the last of it to the crippled shepherd over on the big hill."