‘Why, you don’t mean to say, you’d be hard upon me to-night, Bill,’ said the girl, laying her hand upon his shoulder.
‘No!’ cried Mr. Sikes. ‘Why not?’
‘Such a number of nights,’ said the girl, with a touch of woman’s tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone, even to her voice: ‘such a number of nights as I’ve been patient with you, nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child: and this the first that I’ve seen you like yourself; you wouldn’t have served me as you did just now, if you’d thought of that, would you? Come, come; say you wouldn’t.’
‘Well, then,’ rejoined Mr. Sikes, ‘I wouldn’t.