"Would you have me ask for his daughter?"
"No, indeed; he would fling the amphora back in your face. But you ask—oh, that I should say it—for a commission. Yet, please God, the war will be done; and yet, again, if it is, whence are you going to win glory?"
"Glory!" He sighed and said no more.
"To be frank," continued Grace, "dear father would not keep the amphora now. He loves beautiful things, but he loves his farm better. He needs money. He looks so far ahead, that the present often finds him very straitened. Just now 'tis money he most wants, and you have to begin the campaign by finding twenty thousand pounds for him."
"I'll do my best—the Lord helping."
"And think not, dear John, that I am light of heart because my tongue wags so fast. I laugh, but my spirit is low enough when I remember all that these things must mean. Your life will be full of fret and fever and action; I shall have nothing but thought and hope to fill mine."
"I wish I could believe you. Your dangers will be real ones. If I departed, who is to stand between you and Peter Norcot? Since I am to fight, 'tis your battle, not the King's, that I long to enter into."
Grace shook her head.
"Have no fear for me, John; I can take good care of myself—of that I do assure you. Now tell me that no maid more practical and sensible and brave than I, ever set sail to face a sea of troubles."
Then fell silence between them for a long season, and there was no sound but the rasp of the dry, burnt heather twigs against their horses' feet.