“No. But you’d better take off your coat, Baron—it’s hot work.”
So I did. And much relieved to hear by his tone that he bore me no ill will I joined him on the edge of the table; and if any one had told me a week before that a day was at hand when I should clean boots I would, without hesitation,
Thus, as it were, with blacking, did I cement my friendship with Lord Sigismund
have challenged him to fight, the extremity of the statement’s incredibleness leaving me no choice but to believe it a deliberate insult.
Thus, as it were with blacking, did I cement my friendship with Lord Sigismund. I think he thought me a thoroughly good fellow who was only, like so many people, a little stiff at breakfast, as I sat there helping him, my hat pushed back off my forehead, one leg swinging, and while I brushed and blackened chatting cheerfully about the inferior position the clergy occupy to the German eye. I am sure he was interested, for he paused several times in his work and looked at me over his spectacles with much attention. As for the two nondescripts, they never took their exceedingly round and unblinking eyes off me for an instant.
CHAPTER VI
IT was twelve o’clock before we left Grib’s (or Grip’s) Common, lurching off it by another grassy lane down into the road in the direction of Mereworth, and leaving, as we afterward discovered, several portions of our equipment behind us.
“What a lovely, sparkling world!” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, coming and walking beside me.