“You oughtn’t to be sitting out here,” said Tom. “Why not get up and go inside?”
“Why should I?” rejoined the youth, raising eyes deep-sunken in a mass of skin and bone.
“Because if you don’t you may catch your death.”
“All the better! That’s my lay. I’m cold an’ wet, but it’s no use goin’ in there; there ain’t no fire when you do. I want to go straight to hell.”
Tom shuddered, but stooped down.
“Come, come,” said he; “I’ll give you an arm.”
“You’re a rum cove,” replied the other, looking carelessly up; “but I bet you ain’t kissed this ’ere clink afore, or you wouldn’t say that! Nice spot, ain’t it? But this is a sight better than the Middle Yard. I’ve bin ’ere afore, you see; this makes the fourth time; thank Gawd it’ll be the larst!”
He suffered Tom to help him to his feet, the shrunken shadow of a man, dressed, however, very respectably, in black clothes eloquently loose. On Tom’s arm he was promptly seized with a fit of coughing that sounded as if his bag of bones must split asunder; but he mastered it, wiped his hollow eyes with prominent knuckles, and said: “That’s better! One or two more like that’ll do my business.” Tom’s gorge rose to hear him; yet he understood the feeling. It had come to himself in the soaking, inhospitable fields; only now, with the shadow of death lengthening hourly towards him, he knew how little he had ever wished to die.
“You ought to be in the infirmary,” he said; “it’s a scandal to find you here.”
“No it ain’t!” coughed the youth. “It’s my own doings; Macmurdo ain’t to blame. I on’y come in larst night, and dodged ’im on ’is round this mornin’, ’cause I
