“I will, if you’ll give me something to quench my thirst first.”
The bottle and jug were again produced, and he mixed a weak draught, and another, and drank both in quick succession. “You asked me something,” he said then.
“No, I didn’t,” replied Riderhood.
“I tell you,” retorted Bradley, turning upon him in a wild and desperate manner, “you asked me something, before I went out to wash my face in the river.
“Oh! Then?” said Riderhood, backing a little. “I asked you wot you wos a-going to do.”
“How can a man in this state know?” he answered, protesting with both his tremulous hands, with an action so vigorously angry that he shook the water from his sleeves upon the floor, as if he had wrung them. “How can I plan anything, if I haven’t sleep?”
“Why, that’s what I as good as said,” returned the other. “Didn’t I say lie down?”
“Well, perhaps you did.”
“Well! Anyways I says it again. Sleep where you slept last; the sounder and longer you can sleep, the better you’ll know arterwards what you’re up to.”
His pointing to the truckle bed in the corner, seemed gradually to bring that poor couch to Bradley’s wandering remembrance. He slipped off his worn downtrodden shoes, and cast himself heavily, all wet as he was, upon the bed.
Riderhood sat down in his wooden armchair, and looked through the window at the lightning, and listened to the thunder. But, his thoughts