These warm nights are a great
blessing, but I am sure I know not what we shall do in the
fall of the leaf."
"Take no thought of the morrow," said the foreigner, who was a
Pole; had served as a boy beneath the suns of the Peninsula
under Soult and fought against Diebitsch on the banks of the
icy Vistula. "It brings many changes." And arranging the
cloak which he had taken that day out of pawn around him, he
delivered himself up to sleep with that facility which is not
uncommon among soldiers.
Here broke out a brawl: two girls began fighting and
blaspheming; a man immediately came up, chastised and
separated them. "I am the Lord Mayor of the night," he said,
"and I will have no row here. 'Tis the like of you that makes
the beaks threaten to expel us from our lodgings." His
authority seemed generally recognized, the girls were quiet,
but they had disturbed a sleeping man, who roused himself,
looked around him and said with a scared look, "Where am I?
What's all this?"
"Oh! it's nothin'," said the elder of the two lads we first
noticed, "only a couple of unfortinate gals who've prigged a
watch from a cove what was lushy and fell asleep under the
trees between this and Kinsington.
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