“But I will not be put off in that way! Do you tread beside it in the flower-bed there, and, by comparing the print of your foot with the bird track, we shall easily see which is the larger.”
Ninzian was not so ruddy as he had been. Yet he said with dignity, and lightly enough, he hoped:
“Balthis, you are unreasonable. I do not intend to get my sandals all over mud to settle any such foolish point. The track is just the size of a man’s foot, or it is much larger than a man’s foot, or it is smaller than a man’s foot,—it is, in fine, of any size which you prefer. And we will let that be the end of it.”
“So, Ninzian, you will not tread in that new-digged earth?” said Balthis, queerly.
“Of course I will not ruin my second-best sandals for any such foolish reason!”
“You trod there yesterday in your very best sandals, Ninzian, for the reason that you were tipsy. I saw the print you made there, in broad daylight, Ninzian, when you had just come from drinking with a blessed saint himself, and were reeling all over the neat ways of my garden. Ninzian, it is a fearful thing to know that when your husband walks in mud he leaves tracks like a bird.”
Now Ninzian was truly penitent for yesterday’s over-indulgence. And Ninzian said:
“So, you have discovered this foible of mine, after all my carefulness! That is a great pity.”
Balthis replied, with the cold non-committalness of wives, “Pity or no, you will now have to tell me the truth about it.”
That task did, in point of fact, seem so appallingly unavoidable that Ninzian settled down to it, with such airiness as would have warned any wife in the world exactly how far to trust him.