“Run!”
“Yes, you.”
“You want a week of the branks, my dear. Give me my money and my liquor, and I’m the bully for any man.”
“Oh, you’re a fine fat falcon—you! Keep a little courage in the cask, Sim, till the business comes. Three days’ grace and no countermand. What’s it to be—a mattress, or a fathom of rope, or a soft scarf? What are you looking so sulky about?”
For the man had bunched himself over the fire, and was rocking backward and forward on two legs of the stool.
“Let it alone, you fool,” he said; “it don’t do a man good to think of such things.”
She looked up mockingly, and threw a half-rotten apple at him.
“Oh, you soft head!—you piece of pulp! You’re no better than a great girl—you, who pulled Adam Naylor’s windpipe out and broke in that Frenchman’s chest. You, to make such a blubber over this!”
“Who’s afraid?” he asked, savagely.
“My sweet conscience! Oh, dear, good saints! I’m a poor sinner, a poor snivelling sinner—”