“The doctor ’tended you for nothing; he told me so the first night.”

“Well, and that widow, too; it’s kind of her to send me tea and sugar, and such nice things to eat.”

“Yes, mother, it is.”

“And your father, to bring your little dear sister, so nice and clean, to come and see an old wretch like me in such a dirty hole.  Ah, Jack! now I’m getting well again I like the world better than I did.”

In a few days old Nanny had again opened her shop, sitting at the door as usual, and, as the spring was now well advanced, she gradually recovered her strength.  When I gave up my office of nurse she did not, however, forget to tell me to bring her good bargains, as I had promised that I would.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

     A Morning Concert, in which the Opposition is as great as Black to
     White.

Among my father’s associates there was a man of about forty years of age, Dick Harness by name.  He had received a wound in the hip from a grape-shot, and his leg having in consequence contracted, it occasioned him to limp very much; but he was as strong and hearty in all other respects as a man could be.  He was a very merry fellow, full of jokes, and if any one told a story which was at all verging on the marvelous, he was sure to tell another which would be still more incredible.  He played the fiddle and sang to his own accompaniments, which were very droll, as he extracted very strange noises from his instrument.  Sometimes his bow would be on the wrong side of the bridge, sometimes down at the keys; besides which he produced sounds by thumping the fiddle as well as by touching its strings as a guitar; indeed, he could imitate in a certain way almost every instrument and most of the noises made by animals.  He had one fault, for which he used to be occasionally punished, which was, he was too fond of the bottle; but he was a great favorite, and therefore screened by the men, and as much as possible overlooked by the officers.  The punishment for a pensioner getting drunk was, at that time, being made to wear a yellow instead of a blue coat, which made a man look very conspicuous.

I recollect one day he had the yellow coat on, when a party of ladies and gentlemen came to see the hospital.  Perceiving that he was dressed so differently from the other pensioners, one of the ladies’ curiosity was excited, and at last she called him to her and said, “Pray, my good man, why do you wear a yellow coat when the other pensioners have blue ones?”

“Bless your handsome face, ma’am!” replied Dick, “don’t you really know?”

“No, indeed,” replied she.

“Well, then, ma’am, perhaps you may have heard of the glorious battle of the Nile, in which Nelson gave the French such a drubbing?”

“Oh, yes,” cried all the ladies and gentlemen, who had now crowded about him.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I had the good fortune to be in that great victory, and all we Nilers, as we are called, are permitted to wear a yellow coat as a mark of distinction, while the common pensioners wear nothing but blue.”