"Oh, Sir," said she, again addressing me, "what signifies
a armless thing like an harrow; that's nothin but a little wooden rod
to the stroke of the sun, as they calls it. See what a dreadful cut
it's given him."
Tom looked very impatient at this, but curbed in his vexation, and
said "Thankee, Betty," though his face expressed anything but thanks.
"Thankee, Betty. There, the doctor is calling you. She is as good a
creature, Sir, as ever lived," he continued; "and has seen a deal of
service in her day. But she bothers me to death about that stroke of
the sun. Sometimes I think I'll tell her all about it; but I don't
like to demean myself to her. She wouldn't think nothin' of me, Sir,
if she thought I could have been floored that way; and women, when
they begin to cry, throw up sometime what's disagreeable. They ain't
safe. She would perhaps have heaved up in my face that that dragoon
had slapped my chops for me, with his elmet. I am blowed, Sir, if I
can take a glass of grog out of my canteen, but she says, 'Tom, mind
that stroke of the sun.' And when I ave a big D marked agin my name in
the pension book, she'll swear, to her dying day, I was killed by that
are stroke."
"Why don't you put it on then," I said, "just to please her."
"Well, Sir, if I was at head-quarters, or even at han hout-post, where
there was a detachment, I would put it hon; because it wouldn't seem
decent to go bare-headed.
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