"She's bolted and left me here to starve. I haven't had a
bit since yesterday, nor a drink either, and that's worse. What's to
become of me? I'm starving. I shall have to go to the workhouse. Yes,
me," she added in a scream, "me, who have spent thousands; I shall
have to go to a workhouse like a common woman!"
"It's cruel, marm, cruel," said the sympathetic George, "and you a
lawful wedded wife 'till death do us part.' But, marm, I saw a public
over the way. Now, no offence, but you'll let me just go over and
fetch a bite and a sup."
"Well," she answered hungrily, "you're a gent, you are, though you're
a country one. You go, while I just make a little toilette, and as for
the drink, why let it be brandy."
"Brandy it shall be," said the gallant George, and departed.
In ten minutes he returned with a supply of beef patties, and a bottle
of good, strong "British Brown," which as everybody knows is a
sufficient quantity to render three privates or two blue-jackets drunk
and incapable.
The woman, who now presented a slightly more respectable appearance,
seized the bottle, and pouring about a wine-glass and a half of its
contents into a tumbler mixed it with an equal quantity of water and
drank it off at a draught.
"That's better," she said, "and now for a patty.
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