"I will," I said enthusiastically, drawing my sword; "but I have done nothing yet. Please let me kill something!"
"Aye, lad!" said Spitz, with a grim smile at my enthusiasm. "There's a sheep in your path. Go out and cleave it to the saddle. And bring the saddle home!"
My sister-in-law might have thought me cruel—but I did it.
CHAP XXIII AND SOME OTHER CHAPS
I know not how it was compassed, but that night Rupert of Glasgow was left bound and gagged against the door of the castle, and the night-bell pulled. And that night I was seated on the throne of the S'helpburgs. As I gazed at the Princess Flirtia, glowing in the characteristic beauty of the S'helpburgs, and admired her striking profile, I murmured softly and half audibly: "Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward Damascus."
She looked puzzled, and knitted her pretty brows. "Is that poetry?" she asked.
"No" I said promptly. "It's only part of a song of our great Ancestor." As she blushed slightly, I playfully flung around her fair neck the jeweled collar of the Order of the S'helpburgs—three golden spheres pendant, quartered from the arms of Lombardy—-with the ancient Syric motto, El Ess Dee.
She toyed with it a moment, and then said softly: "You have changed, Rupert. Do ye no ken hoo?"
I looked at her—as surprised at her dialect as at the imputation.
"You don't talk that way, as you did. And you don't say, 'It WILL be twelve o'clock,' when you mean, 'It IS twelve o'clock,' nor 'I will be going out,' when you mean 'I AM.' And you didn't say, 'Eh, sirs!' or 'Eh, mon,' to any of the Court—nor 'Hoot awa!' nor any of those things. And," she added with a divine little pout, "you haven't told me I was 'sonsie' or 'bonnie' once."