"That's better than two yards stripped off a wench's smock," he said at
last. "And a damnably fine smock too, you lucky rascal."
He twittered a snatch of ribaldry that made my foot twitch in my boot.
Behind his back, I pocketed the priceless relic, dank and red with my
unworthy blood, and followed him back to the company.
We made a longish stay, and fared well at his table. The doctor was a
good enough fellow in himself, but his wife, a salt, domineering woman,
lived in the light of the Parker Putwells, and he, poor devil, in the
shadow they cast. He was playing a double game too, for whenever the
red-elbowed serving-wench came into the room, he roared his dissent from
our lawlessness, and drank to the King with his glass over the
water-bottle as soon as she went out. Once when she brought us a rare dish
of calvered roach and, with wenchlike curiosity, lingered to pick up a
crumb or two of gossip, we had a snap of comedy, for, in his play-acting,
he would take none till Maclachlan, to keep up the farce, thrust a pistol
at his head and forced him. Whereupon the maid, in plucky fashion, threw a
cottage loaf at Maclachlan and took him fairly in the chest.
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