"Quem si puellarum chore inseres."
He got no further in his quotation. For he tilted his chair at this moment, and I thrusting at it with my foot, he tumbled over backwards and sprawled on the ground, swearing at great length.
"'Wilt never win a wife by fair means for all that," he sputtered.
"Then 'tis no more than prudence in me to wed my books."
So I spake, and hot on the heels of my saying came the message which divorced me from them for good and all. For as Larke still lay upon the floor, a clatter of horse's hoofs came to us through the open window. The sound stopped at our door. Larke rose hastily, and leaned out across the sill.
"It is an Englishman," he cried. "He comes to us."
The next moment a noise of altercation filled the air. I could hear the shrill speech of our worthy landlady, and above it a man's voice in the English dialect, growing ever louder and louder as though the violence of his tone would translate his meaning. I followed Larke to the window. The quiet street was alive with peeping faces, and just beneath us stood the reason of the brawl, a short, thick-set man, whose face was hidden by a large flapping hat. His horse stood in the roadway in a lather of spume. For some reason, doubtless the excitement of his manner, our hostess would not let him pass into the house. She stood solidly filling the doorway, and for a little it amused us to watch the man's vehement gesticulations; so little thought had we of the many strange events which were to follow from his visit. In a minute, however, he turned his face towards us, and I recognised him as Nicholas Swasfield, the body-servant of my good friend, Sir Julian Harnwood.
"Let him up!" I cried. "Let him up!"
"Yes, woman, let him up!" repeated Larke, and turning to me: "He hath many choice and wonderful oaths, and I fain would add them to my store."
Thereupon the woman drew reluctantly aside, and Swasfield bounded past her into the passage. We heard him tumble heavily up the dark stairway, cursing the country and its natives, and then with a great bump of his body he burst open the door and lurched into the room. At the sight of me he brake into a glad cry: