She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted,
but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a
mill, and made your head sore like the drays and wagons
in a city. If she had had a cork she would have
been a comfort. But you can’t cork that
kind; they would die. Her clack was going all
day, and you would think something would surely happen
to her works, by and by; but no, they never got out
of order; and she never had to slack up for words.
She could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by
the week, and never stop to oil up or blow out.
And yet the result was just nothing but wind.
She never had any ideas, any more than a fog has.
She was a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw,
jaw, talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but
just as good as she could be. I hadn’t
minded her mill that morning, on account of having
that hornets’ nest of other troubles; but more
than once in the afternoon I had to say:
“Take a rest, child; the way you are using up
all the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go
to importing it by to-morrow, and it’s a low
enough treasury without that.”
CHAPTER XIII
FREEMEN
Yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a
person can be contented. Only a little while
back, when I was riding and suffering, what a heaven
this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity in this
secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have
seemed, where I could keep perfectly comfortable all
the time by pouring a dipper of water into my armor
now and then; yet already I was getting dissatisfied;
partly because I could not light my pipe—for,
although I had long ago started a match factory, I
had forgotten to bring matches with me—and
partly because we had nothing to eat. Here was
another illustration of the childlike improvidence
of this age and people. A man in armor always
trusted to chance for his food on a journey, and would
have been scandalized at the idea of hanging a basket
of sandwiches on his spear. There was probably
not a knight of all the Round Table combination who
would not rather have died than been caught carrying
such a thing as that on his flagstaff. And yet
there could not be anything more sensible. It
had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches
into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and
had to make an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog
got them.
Night approached, and with it a storm. The darkness
came on fast. We must camp, of course.
I found a good shelter for the demoiselle under a
rock, and went off and found another for myself.
But I was obliged to remain in my armor, because
I could not get it off by myself and yet could not
allow Alisande to help, because it would have seemed
so like undressing before folk. It would not
have amounted to that in reality, because I had clothes
on underneath; but the prejudices of one’s breeding
are not gotten rid of just at a jump, and I knew that
when it came to stripping off that bob-tailed iron
petticoat I should be embarrassed.
