‘O, is it you, dear Anne?’ whined the inmate, opening the door a little further. ‘I could hardly get to the door to open it, I am so weak.’
The speaker was a wizened old gentleman, in a coat the colour of his farmyard, breeches of the same hue, unbuttoned at the knees, revealing a bit of leg above his stocking and a dazzlingly white shirt-frill to compensate for this untidiness below. The edge of his skull round his eye-sockets was visible through the skin, and he had a mouth whose corners made towards the back of his head on the slightest provocation. He walked with great apparent difficulty back into the room, Anne following him.
‘Well, you can have the paper if you want it; but you never give me much time to see what’s in en! Here’s the paper.’ He held it out, but before she could take it he drew it back again, saying, ‘I have not had my share o’ the paper by a good deal, what with my weak sight, and people coming so soon for en. I am a poor put-upon soul; but my “Duty of Man” will be left to me when the newspaper is gone.’ And he sank into his chair with an air of exhaustion.
Anne said that she did not wish to take the paper if he had not done with it, and that she was really later in the week than usual, owing to the soldiers.
‘Soldiers, yes—rot the soldiers! And now hedges will be broke, and hens’ nests robbed, and sucking-pigs stole, and I don’t know what all. Who’s to pay for’t, sure? I reckon that because the soldiers be come you don’t mean to be kind enough to read to me what I hadn’t time to read myself.’
She would read if he wished, she said; she was in no hurry. And sitting herself down she unfolded the paper.
‘“Dinner at Carlton House”?’
‘No, faith. ’Tis nothing to I.’
‘“Defence of the country”?’
‘Ye may read that if ye will. I hope there will be no billeting in this parish, or any wild work of that sort; for what would a poor old lamiger like myself do with soldiers in his house, and nothing to feed ’em with?’