Visiting Cotton

"Of course it is," the surgeon replied.

"Of course it is!" Maggie echoed. "How would you get on if I wasn't here to look after you and all? I'm staying with you."

"Just checkin', like. Didn't want to presume it was all right to find it wasn't, you know."

The surgeon smiled and Maggie looked startled. The very idea!

"I wouldn't dream of separating you from your nurse," he said. "At least, not while there's room for the pair of you in the wagon. Now good day to you both. You know where to find me if you need me."

"Thank'ee, sir. An' we'll be fine. Won't we, lass?"

"I think so, yes."

He made his way up the steps and sat down inside, thankful that he wasn't going to risk keeling over in a dead faint on the march. He felt much better now, actually, which puzzled him a bit. He lay his rifle carefully to one side. making room for Maggie.

"They lads'll reckon we'm gettin' spoilt, ridin' like this, you know," he said, grinning at her.

"Let 'em think that. I don't care," she said, collapsing in a comfortable heap. "You can tell 'em you're just doing it for my sake so I can sleep in a wagon."

He grinned at her. "Don't go fallin' asleep on me now, lass, will you?"

She frowned. "You're no fun." But she immediately sat up and grinned. "I need to do my sewing anyway. This is some fancy thing for a private, isn't it? Look at all this braid. I wonder if hussars generally manage to keep clean better, since they're up above everything on their horses? It looks very fine, but it hardly looks right for fighting in."

"Cavalry do have fancy uniforms, lass. Though the cloth ain't so fine as an officer has, o' course. But look at it - the braid's in that same sort o' pattern as the Captain's, see?"

"I see. The cloth's not as fine? No, I guess not, though I haven't mended many cavalry uniforms. All that braid...! Must be expensive. I should charge him double!" she said with a mischievous grin. "Not really, poor thing. So he lost his whole company? Did they leave him for dead? They weren't all dead, were they?"

"I think he was knocked out, and stuck under his horse. They must've thought he was dead, like. And it sounded like they'd left him behind, anyway. He didn't say there was any others left with him, like.

"What a wretched thing. And a Portuguese man brought him back? That was lucky." She threaded her needle and knotted the thread, looking for the best place to start. "Think we'll run into the same French?"

"I dunno, lass. We'll run into some French, sometime. We're soldiers and it's a war, after all."

He really wasn't sure how he could best reassure her, especially when he remembered Balstrode.

But she was only asking from curiosity, her mind mostly taken up by the tasks at hand. "Right, well meantime you should practice your letters, if you're up for it. Want to try some writing while I do this?"

"All right... if you'm sure. Dunno how much I can 'member, though."

"Maybe you should try copying all the ones on the paper, writing them on the slate to get used to their shapes."

"All of them? But I don't know above half o' them, or what they say."

He took the slate and pencil anyway.

"I know. You can start with the ones you do know."

"All right." He worked in silent concentration for a few minutes, looking between the slate and the piece of paper.

"There."



"I only done the ones I know, like you said. But I done the officers and the soldiers, both."

(OOC - gotta go. Lecture at uni...)

She studied the slate for a few moments, a smile slowly spreading across her face. "Gabe, those are beautiful. Look at your Ns! And you've got one, two, three... fourteen, so that's more than half. You've learned more than half the letters in the English language already. You should feel proud!"

He did feel proud, and he was sure she could see it. "Dunno what they'll say back home," he said, looking at his work. "They won't believe it, that's for sure. Gabriel Cotton learnin' to write. Dunno if'n the Captain'll believe it, even. Dunno if I believe it."

"And you've learned it all so fast, too. You'll have to practice, you know, so you won't forget it. You'll have to read and write something every day. Just a little, just so you don't forget." She put down her sewing and reached for the slate. "Are you ready for a new word?"

"All right." He surrendered the slate, curious as to what the new word would be.

She smiled at his hesitation when she erased the letters he had so painstakingly formed. Understandable. The pencil clicked and tapped as she wrote out the new word. "There. See what you make of that."