bacon on the dresser,
and the old man will be about you if you don't fetch him his breakfast.
I'll send for my things in the evenin'." With a nod she strolled off
with her attendant gossips in the direction of the public house.

Thus left to her own devices, the country girl walked into the front
room and took off her hat and jacket. It was a low-roofed apartment
with a sputtering fire upon which a small brass kettle was singing
cheerily. A stained cloth lay over half the table, with an empty brown
teapot, a loaf of bread, and some coarse crockery. Norah Brewster
looked rapidly about her, and in an instant took over her new duties.
Ere five minutes had passed the tea was made, two slices of bacon were
frizzling on the pan, the table was rearranged, the antimacassars
straightened over the sombre brown furniture, and the whole room had
taken a new air of comfort and neatness. This done she looked round
curiously at the prints upon the walls. Over the fireplace, in a
small, square case, a brown medal caught her eye, hanging from a strip
of purple ribbon. Beneath was a slip of newspaper cutting. She stood
on her tiptoes, with her fingers on the edge of the mantelpiece, and
craned her neck up to see it, glancing down from time to time at the
bacon which simmered and hissed beneath her. The cutting was yellow
with age, and ran in this way:

"On Tuesday an interesting ceremony was performed at the barracks of
the Third Regiment of Guards, when, in the presence of the Prince
Regent, Lord Hill, Lord Saltoun, and an assemblage which comprised
beauty as well as valour, a special medal was presented to Corporal
Gregory Brewster, of Captain Haldane's flank company, in recognition of
his gallantry in the recent great battle in the Lowlands. It appears
that on the ever-memorable 18th of June four companies of the Third
Guards and of the Coldstreams, under the command of Colonels Maitland
and Byng, held the important farmhouse of Hougoumont at the right of
the British position. At a critical point of the action these troops
found themselves short of powder. Seeing that Generals Foy and Jerome
Buonaparte were again massing their infantry for an attack on the
position, Colonel Byng dispatched Corporal Brewster to the rear to
hasten up the reserve ammunition. Brewster came upon two powder
tumbrils of the Nassau division, and succeeded, after menacing the
drivers with his musket, in inducing them to convey their powder to
Ho