“Go on, Thomas.”
“One night a comin’ ’ome with ’Arry, the other English boy, I sees ’im a sittin’ there on them steps. We ’ad Molly and Jen with us, sir, the two girls on the tray service, an’ ’e looks so insultin’ at us that I up and sez: ‘Wat you looking hat, you fat slug?’—beg pardon, sir, but that’s ’ow I sez, sir. Then ’e don’t say nothin’ and I sez: ‘Come out and I’ll punch that puddin’ ’ed.’ Then I hopens the gate an’ goes in, but ’e don’t say nothin’, only looks insultin’ like. Then I ’its ’im one, but, ugh! ’is ’ed was that cold and mushy it ud sicken you to touch ’im.”
“What did he do then?” I asked curiously.
“ ’Im? Nawthin’.”
“And you, Thomas?”
The young fellow flushed with embarrassment and smiled uneasily.
“ Mr. Scott, sir, I ain’t no coward, an’ I can’t make it out at all why I run. I was in the 5th Lawncers, sir, bugler at Tel-el-Kebir, an’ was shot by the wells.”
“You don’t mean to say you ran away?”
“Yes, sir; I run.”
“Why?”
“That’s just what I want to know, sir. I grabbed Molly an’ run, an’ the rest was as frightened as I.”
“But what were they frightened at?”
Thomas refused to answer for a while, but now my curiosity was aroused about the repulsive young man below and I pressed him. Three years’