Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

400 страница из 895

“Poor old hoss!” chanted Nelly.

“But when I wur young I was as lissom as ever a young man here. I baint so strong now as I should be, though when my feyther wur eighty years old he could carry a sack of wheat up a ladder into a granary; and my mother’s hair when she wur an old ’ooman was as black and shiny as jet, and growed over her shoulders like a wild colt’s mane.

“I don’t know rightly what mak’s me weaker than they. My arm be a’ withered up like a burnt piece of pig’s flesh, an’ my poor chest do hurt me when I breathes. I think the beer can’t be so wholesome and nourishing as it yoosed to be.”

And Nat, taking his half-pint mug from the table, peered into it and found it empty.

“Why it’s run out!” he cried.

A hoarse giggle from a sun-burnt country lad pointed out the culprit.

“All run out a’ the top, I s’pose,” he added, resignedly. “Now, Bricket, let’s have another half-pint o’ twopenny, and draw it thickish, ’cos I aint had my supper.”

Nat always liked his beer by instalments of half-pints, because he thought that he got more that way.