"Not a bit," said Rudolf, "but I'm sure I'm glad you came along when you did, for I don't know how we ever would have got rid of the beastly little things. Only when we first saw you, we thought—"
"Oh, I know," interrupted the stranger hastily—"you thought it was something worse. That's it, that's just my luck! I'm the gentlest creature in the world and everybody's afraid of me. My business," he explained, turning to Ann, "is to redress wrongs and to see after the ladies, but—bless you—they won't let me get near enough to do anything for 'em!" A great tear rolled down his long nose as he spoke, and he looked so silly that Ann and Rudolf could hardly help laughing at him, though they did not in the least want to be rude.
"And then," continued the creature, sobbing, "I'm so divided in my feelings. If I were only all Knight, now, or even all Mare, I'd be thankful, but a Knight-mare is an unsatisfactory sort of thing to be."
"A Knight-mare—Oh, how dreadful!" cried Ann, drawing away from him. "Is that what you are?"
"There! You see how it is!" exclaimed the Knight-mare, tossing his long black mane. "Nobody's got any sympathy for me. How would you like it? Suppose you were a little girl only as far as your shoulders and all the rest of you hippopotamus, eh?"
"I wouldn't like it at all," said Ann, after thinking a moment.
"Then no more do I," said the Knight-mare, and sighed a long sad sigh.
"Would you mind telling us how it happened?" asked Rudolf politely.
"Not at all," said the Knight-mare. "You see I was a great boy for fighting in the old days—though you mightn't think it to see me now—and I used to ride forth to battle on my coal-black steed, this very mare whose head I'm wearing now. Well, of course I was a terror to my enemies, used to scare 'em into fits, and I suppose it was one of those very fellows that got me into this fix, dreamed me into it one night, you know, only he got me and my steed mixed. We've stayed mixed ever since, and the worst of it is I oughtn't to be a Bad Dream at all. I was the nicest kind of a Good Dream once—why I belonged to a lady who lived in a castle, and she thought a lot of me, she did!"
"It's too bad," said Rudolf sympathetically; "but isn't there anything you can do about it?"