Then I could not help reproaching him a little with
having ventured himself in that terrible climate and hopeless cause.
'As to the climate, that was not so much amiss,' said Eustace.
'Western Scotland is better and more wholesome than these Dutch
marshes. The sea-gull fares better than the frog.'
'But the cause,' I said. 'Why did you not wait to go with the King?'
'There were reasons, Meg,' he said. 'The King was hounding---yes,
hounding out the Marquis to lead the forlorn hope. Heaven forgive me
for my disloyalty in thinking he wished to be quit of one so
distasteful to the Covenanters who have invited him.'
And when I broke forth in indignation, Eustace lowered his voice, and
said sadly that the King was changed in many points from the Prince
of Wales, and that listening to policy was not good for him. Then I
asked why, if the King hounded, as he called it, the Marquis, on this
unhappy expedition, should Eustace have share in it?
'It was enough to anger any honest man,' said Eustace, 'to see the
flower of all the cavaliers thus risked without a man of rank or
weight to back him, with mere adventurers and remnants of Goring's
fellows, and Irishmen that could only do him damage with the Scots.
I, with neither wife nor child, might well be the one to share the
venture.'
'Forgetting your sisters,' said I. 'Ah, Eustace, was there no other
cause to make you restless?'
'You push me hard, Meg.
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