Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/226

206 only say out what it is that's throublin' ye so this minute!"

"Coming up here as a convict; that's all, Peggy."

"There's hundhreds more in thim huts forninst us!"

"That's no comfort, I'm afraid. You see I am very selfish, I think only of myself."

"But they're all convicts here. Ivery mother's son but the ould cove and Mr. Nat!"

"What, the overseer too?"

"Ginger? It's Ginger we call'm, an' a dacent man at most times is Ginger, tho' you needn't be tellin' 'm I said so. But faith! he's no betther than the rest of us; if he isn't a convict now he's a tickut-of-lave, an' it's ivery wan of us'll be that, sorr, if we live long enough."

"Yes? Don't 'sir' me, Peggy. Call me Tom. I'm not even like Ginger, you know. I'm a convict of the deepest and the newest dye!"

"An' what am I?"

"Not you, too, Peggy?"

"Me, too, Tom; an' it's siven year I'm here for. So don't you make such a song of it, me dear, or it's me ye'll be puttin' to the blush!"

Indeed he had done so already. And, to believe Peggy, the second blush ever seen at Castle Sullivan was still mantling her pleasant face when spurs jingled again in the scullery, and Mr. Nat stood on the inner threshold. Some moments he stood there without a word, a furious glitter in his cold blue eye—his lewd mouth showing through his beard like a gash. Peggy shrank back. Tom was wondering if the brute had ever struck her, when he was addressed in a voice that shook with ill-governed ferocity.