Brion did not respond: for all his tragic mood, an irresistible spasm seized him.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked, surprised. ‘Are you laughing?’
He shook all through as he held her; and suddenly he gasped.
‘O, God a’ mercy, Joan—that word! Where did you learn it?’
‘From a Mr Richard Grenville, a Border Captain, that lay once at the Chase. He spake much of savage lands across the seas, and of those that inhabit there. The wives are so called, Brion: i’faith I know they are.’
‘O! Very well, if you know.’
‘He told, too, of many strange things he had seen, both men and beasts; amongst others of a bird called a pelican that hath seventeen stomachs, and will feed its young, when they are starving, on its own hump.’
‘Hump! A bird with a hump!’
‘It is true, Brion; really it is.’
‘I am sure it is, Joan; and I call that an unlucky bird; for methinks it might seldom happen that all the seventeen were in one agreement, unless for pain. But let that pass; and, as to the wives, why I say you shall be no wild man’s squawk, though I have to marry you myself.’