Then he flung himself flat on the ground, passionately hiding his face in those manacled hands, and refusing the coarse food that was offered to him. He had money in his possession, but Denham had advised him to be in no haste to betray the fact.
“Never you mind,” a voice said at his side, clear and chirpy as the note of a robin. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. It isn’t our fault. The shame is for them—not us. Cheer up, comrade.”
The combined childishness and manliness of the tones made an odd impression upon Roy, the more so as they also brought a sense of something familiar. He pulled himself up slowly. One of the middies had drawn close; a pretty boy, perhaps two years Roy’s junior, with a rosy face, and any amount of pluck in it.
Roy gazed hard at him, in growing bewilderment.
“You’d better eat while you can. None too good fare, eh?”—with the same droll assumption of manliness. “As for these”—and he lifted his little brown manacled hands—“why, it only shows we’re Englishmen. Ain’t you proud of that? I am!” Then a pause, and a stare. “O I say! My eyes!”
“I say!” echoed Roy.
“If you ain’t as like as two peas——”
“And you’ve a look——”
“It’s Roy Baron, as I’m alive!”
“And I declare it’s Will Peirce!”