How the King’s Messenger Sought Roehurst Pool in July, and what he saw.
“Sir Thomas, and if I did not feel bound to carry out my royal master’s commands, I’d go no further, but sit down here on this shady bank, and bask in the sunshine of your daughter’s eyes. Once more I say, is there any ending to this winding lane?”
“Patience, Sir Mark; pray have patience,” said portly Sir Thomas Beckley, baronet and justice of the peace, as he took off his sugar-loaf hat with its plume of cock’s feathers, and wiped the great beads of perspiration from his pink brow. “Patience; and pray do not stuff my daughter’s head with courtly phrases, or you will make her vain.”
“Patience? Why, Sir Thomas, it is for her sake I am speaking. This lane has gone up and down, and in and out, and backwards and forwards, till my heart aches more than my legs to see her pretty little feet getting wedged between stones, and her face flushed with toil.”
“Well, yes,” said Sir Thomas, “the roads are rather bad down here in Sussex.”
“Bad, man? Why, they are abominable. They are as if cursed by witches. In winter they must be sloughs and pits for unwary feet.”
“This is but a by-road, Sir Mark,” said the baronet, pompously.
“By-road, indeed! Mistress Anne, why did you not have the carriage?”
“This lane was never meant for carriages, Sir Mark,” cried Sir Thomas, hastily. “The last time I had it brought down here, my two stout horses dragged the fore wheels from the body.”
“The ruts are ready to drag my legs from my body, Sir Thomas; and, fiends and torture, what blocks! Why, what rock is that?”