“Yes,” said Farr. He opened his mouth to ask another question, for the policeman seemed to be of the obliging sort. Then he closed his lips resolutely and marched along.
“What's the use?” he muttered. “Two dark eyes and a red mouth—and I am almost forgetting how to be a philosopher.”
Farther down the city thoroughfare he met one who had claimed to be a philosopher. It was Jared Chick, stalking along the sidewalk in his home-made armor. He held a box of stove-polish in one hand and a brush in the other, and as he strolled he was giving his corselet and such parts of the armor as he could handily reach a glossy coat—a gleaming and burnished surface. On his helmet in place of a crest Knight Chick bore aloft a metal banneret inscribed, “Invincible Stove Polish.”
“And the mission?” asked Farr, halting his quondam companion, who had been too intent upon his business to pay heed to passers.
“I find thee changed, and no doubt thee, too, finds me changed,” sighed Mr. Chick.
The mouth of an alley between high buildings afforded a retreat and the breeze blew there fitfully, and Mr. Chick stepped to that oasis of shade in the glare of sunshine.
“I have been obliged to modify my mission in some degree. I must confess that to thee,” he said. “This is a strange and wicked world.”
“Didn't you know it before you gave up a good blacksmith business to go out in the hot sun and suffer torment, all for nothing?”
“It is very hard work,” acknowledged Chick, showing his flushed and streaming face under his vizor. “If I were not used to the fires of the forge I think I would fall down and die. But I must keep on.”
“But you are simply an advertising-sign.”