“Forgit it, then” (and she pointed to the sun), “whiles yet some o’t is left. Tell me a tale, an thou’rt minded.”
“Of what?”
“O’ the bloodiest battle thou’st ever heard tell on.”
So, sitting by the mouth of the Jew’s Kitchen, I told her as much as I could remember out of Homer’s Iliad, wondering the while what my tutor, Mr. Josias How, of Trinity College, would think to hear me so use his teaching. By-and-bye, as I warm’d to the tale, Joan forgot her new smartness; and at length, when Hector was running from Achilles round the walls, clapp’d her hands for excitement, crying, “Church an’ King, lad! Oh, brave work!”
“Why, no,” answered I, “’twas not for that they were fighting;” and looking at her, broke off with, “Joan, art certainly a handsome girl: give me a kiss for the mirror.”
Instead of flying out, as I look’d for, she fac’d round, and answered me gravely—
“That I will not: not to any but my master.”
“And who is that?”
“No man yet; nor shall be till one has beat me sore: him will I love, an’ follow like a dog—if so be he whack me often enow’.”
“A strange way to love,” laughed I. She look’d at me straight, albeit with an odd gloomy light in her eyes.