She was saying words that her father often said, and for his sake they seemed very fair and very true, and she uttered them lovingly. To the fool they seemed the last frenzy of folly. But there was nothing better to drink, and his dryness yearned furiously. He lifted the cup to his lips and sipped with a wry face. Then he glanced up at the girl slyly.
“It were but courteous to drink my hostess’s health, but I will not pledge your ripeness in so thin-spirited a tipple. Yet a malediction may cream on it, so here’s damnation to the King.”
And as he spoke he drank again, and seemed to drink with more gusto, but the girl frowned at his malevolence.
“The milk should be sour that is supped so sourly,” she said.
The grimace on the twisted face deepened into a sneer as the fool handed back the empty cup, to be filled again.
“Mistress Red-head,” he said, “if you knew the King as well as I know him you would damn him as deeply.”
Perpetua’s wide eyes watched the deformed thing with wonder. She thought he must, indeed, be mad to rail at the good King, so she answered him gently as she gave him back the full cup.
“I have lived on this hill-top all my life, and know little of the world of cities at the foot of the mountain. But whenever my father speaks of the King he calls him Robert the Good.”