"What do you mean?"
"I shall take away the ladder!"
"You would never do such a thing!" quoth I, starting.
"Tush!" she retorted and, turning from me with a disdainful swirl of her short petticoat, began to descend into the depths below, seeing which, I scrambled to my feet and crossed to the trap, only to behold her standing beneath me, the ladder dragged quite out of my reach.
"Fly down, little bird!" she cried insolently. "Jump, Jack—jump!" and snapping finger and thumb at me, was gone before my anger might find vent in words.
Trapped and imprisoned thus, I presently came wandering disconsolately back to the hay-pile and lying there began to ponder upon the extreme unlovely deportment of this strange creature whose almost every speech and look and gesture outraged all my preconceived ideas of "the sex", and bitterly to deplore my present situation.
Evening was falling apace but there was still sufficient light to show me something of the place wherein I lay and the orderly disorder that surrounded me. In one corner, upon a rough board that served for a shelf, stood six battered volumes flanked by divers pots and pans; against the wall near by hung a small, cracked mirror, while dangling from nails driven into the warped and twisted timbering of roof and walls hung a great variety of baskets, large and small and variously shaped, of rush or bent withies, many of which seemed in course of manufacture. These and many other objects I took casual heed of as I lay, but often my gaze would rove back to the six books standing so orderly amid the pots and pans; indeed, these so stirred my interest that I began to wonder what manner of books these might be and what should bring them in such a strange and desolate place, so that despite my aches and pains I felt much disposed to rise and investigate them, but in the end was content to lie and stare at them while the light failed and shadows deepened until, my eyes little serving me, I closed them and fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH I BEGIN TO APPRECIATE THE VIRTUES OF THE CHASTE GODDESS
Assuredly never were the nostrils of mortal youth saluted with odour more inspiring and altogether more delectable than that which, wooing me from the drowsy arms of Morpheus, awoke me to growing consciousness of three several things, namely: light, movement and an extraordinarily poignant hunger.