“No,” says he, with a grin. “I had you walk first so if there was one you’d sort of warn me of it.”
“Which I done,” says I, feeling pretty chilly and not what you could call comfortable.
“You’ve been wet before,” says he, “and it didn’t hurt you.”
“Probably,” says I, “it won’t hurt me this time, but that hain’t no reason I should be happy about it.”
We didn’t say any more until we’d scouted out the other side of the bridge and found that none of the Knight’s men were hidden there.
“Now,” says Mark, “we want to hide ourselves so’s we can overhear what they s-s-say. Let’s f-find a good place.”
It was an old wooden bridge, and when you looked up at it from below you made up your mind that it had better be fixed some time before long, for you could see through cracks and splits and broken boards right up to the sky.
“What’s the matter,” says I, “with hidin’ down under the bridge, right at the end? Nobody’ll look there, and we can sit on the bank in the mud and be comfortable. I love to sit in the mud,” says I.
“Good idee,” says Mark. “Fine idee. We can hear p-plain, and not one chance in a hunderd of bein’ seen.”
Under we got and settled there as comfortable as was possible. I don’t know if you ever sat in black mud under an old bridge with your clothes dripping and the evening chilly, but if you did, and got any fun out of it, why then, you are better at enjoying yourself than I am. My teeth got to chattering.