'I'll do all you ask, Master,' Ned said, 'but ride a-horseback. I will walk fifty miles sooner. My legs are full of pins and needles, and it will take a deal of shaking and rubbing before I can call 'em my own again.'
Humphrey could not resist laughing, for Ned's face was comical in its contortions, as he stamped his feet and rubbed his shins with muttered exclamations that, as long as his name was Ned, he would never get upon a horse's back again.
'You've got a fit of the cramp,' Humphrey said, 'it will soon pass. Now, after you have had a good meal, take this letter which is tied and sealed, and put it into the hands of Mistress Gifford. It will tell her all I can yet tell her in answer to the letter you brought me. At least she will know by it that I will do my utmost to serve her, and find her son.'
Ned took the letter with his large brown fingers, and, putting it into the pouch in the breast of his smock, he said,—
'I'll carry it safe, Master, and I'll be off at once.'
'Not till you have broken your long fast in the kitchen of the hostel.'
'An it please you, Master, I would sooner be off, if I get a cake to eat on the way, and a draft of ale before I start; that will serve me. Do not order me, I pray you, to sit down with those gibing villains—no, nor order me, kind sir, to mount a horse again. If I live to be three score, I pray Heaven I may never sit a-horseback again.'
CHAPTER IX
ACROSS THE FORD