Another time I spoke of English beef, saying how it would rebuild a man
at need--how it had made the English soldier what he is. Whereupon, as
before, my loving forager took a hint where none was intended; was gone
the night long, and slaughtered me some Tory yearling,--'twas Mr.
Gilbert Stair's, I mistrusted, though Dick would never name the owner,
and so I had a sirloin to my breakfast.
In these and many other ways he spent himself freely for love of me. If
he had been a younger brother of my own blood the common parentage could
not have made him tenderer.
'Twas not the mere outgushing of a nature open-armed to make a bosom
friend of all the world; nor any feminine softness on his part. If I
have drawn him thus my pen is but a clumsy quill, for he was manly-rough
and masterful, with all the native strength and vigor of the
border-born.
But on the side of love and friendship no woman ever had a truer heart,
a keener eye or a lighter hand. And in a service for friend or mistress
he would spend himself as recklessly as those old knights you read about
who made a business of their chivalry.
With his daily offerings of unselfishness to shame me, you may be sure
that I was flayed alive; self-flogged like a miserable monk, with all
the woundings of the whip well salted by remorse. As you have guessed,
I had not yet summoned up the courage to tell him how I had staked his
chance of happiness upon a casting of the die of fate--staked and lost
it.
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