He stood there a moment looking at the company, his bare feet peeping from the blanket, and nodded.
“Hello, Johnny! You ain’t goin’ to turn in agin, are ye?” said Dick.
“Yes, I are,” responded Johnny, decidedly.
“Why, wot’s up, old fellow?”
“I’m sick.”
“How sick?”
“I’ve got a fevier. And childblains. And roomatiz,” returned Johnny, and vanished within. After a moment’s pause, he added in the dark, apparently from under the bedclothes—“And biles!”
There was an embarrassing silence. The men looked at each other and at the fire.
Even with the appetising banquet before them, it seemed as if they might again fall into the despondency of Thompson’s grocery, when the voice of the Old Man, incautiously lifted, came deprecatingly from the kitchen.
“Certainly! Thet’s so. In course they is. A gang o’ lazy drunken loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen’s the ornariest of all. Didn’t hev no more sabe than to come round yar with sickness in the house and no provision. Thet’s what I said: ‘Bullen,’ sez I, ‘it’s crazy drunk you are, or a fool,’ sez I, ‘to think o’ such a thing.’ ‘Staples,’ I sez, ‘be you a man, Staples, and ’spect to raise h—ll under my roof and invalids lyin’ round?’ But they would come—they would. Thet’s wot you must ’spect o’ such trash as lays round the Bar.”