Page:A Set of Rogues.djvu/297

 "Why, that's a good thought. What say you, dear, shall we go a-play-acting again?"

Moll shook her head.

"To be sure," says he, scratching his jaw, "we come out of that business with no great encouragement to go further in it. But times are mended since then, and I do hear the world is more mad for diversion now than ever they were before the Plague."

"No, dear," says Moll, "'tis of no use to think of that. I couldn't play now."

After this we sat silent awhile, looking into the embers; then Jack, first to give expression to his thoughts, says:

"I think you were never so happy in your life, Moll, as that time we were in Spain, nor can I recollect ever feeling so free from care myself,—after we got out of the hands of that gentleman robber. There's a sort of infectious brightness in the sun, and the winds, blow which way they may, do chase away dull thoughts and dispose one to jollity; eh, sweetheart? Why, we met never a tattered vagabond on the road but he was halloing of ditties, and a kinder, more hospitable set of people never lived. With a couple of rials in your pocket, you feel as rich and independent as with an hundred pounds in your hand elsewhere."

At this point Moll, who had hitherto listened in apathy to these eulogies, suddenly pushing back her chair, looks at us with a strange look in her eyes, and says under her breath, "Elche!"

"Barcelony for my money," responds Dawson, whose memories of Elche were not so cheerful as of those parts where we had led a more vagabond life.