Meanwhile Marian continued to gaze around with delight. Macfarren felt at every moment the subtile charm of her exquisite womanhood. Understanding as he did the reason of her peculiar ignorance of every-day matters, nothing she did shocked him. Marian talked gayly and unreservedly, and promised him a wild boar's head for his Christmas dinner if he came to King's Lyndon. "And, though they may want to place thee with the clerks and the chaplain," she said, smiling, "I will have thee above the salt with me, for I see thou hast the heart and soul as well as the manners of a gentleman."
In a few minutes the simple dinner ordered by Macfarren came. Marian's eyes glistened as they rested on the roast beef. "That came from a goodly baron of roast beef; but where is the ale wherewith to wash it down?" she asked.
Macfarren, with a terrible recollection of Marian's performances in the ale-drinking line, hastily took up the wine-list, marked off two bottles of Bass's ale, and handed it to the obsequious James, who disappeared and in a few moments returned with it. He fetched glasses with a flourish, and, drawing the cork, the creamy flood poured into the tumbler at Marian's plate. This, however, did not seem to please Marian. Looking around, she saw near by a pitcher. "Bring me yon tankard," she said to James. James, warned by the light in Macfarren's eye, brought the pitcher. Marian, quietly pouring all of the ale in her glass, and all left in the bottle, into the pitcher, James in a twinkling opened the other bottle and poured it in also, when, lifting the pitcher as she had done the tureen of soup to her rosy lips, she drank the quart of ale in a single breath.
Macfarren's agony of pity was painful to him. The idea that she would be laughed at inspired him with frenzy. Yet, having perfect self-control, he gave no outward indication of the tumult within him, and managed to say in quite his ordinary voice to Marian, "Won't you let me give you some of this roast beef?"
"In faith I will," responded Marian, with alacrity, and, reaching over, she picked up a large slice of rare beef in her fingers and began munching it with much enjoyment. Macfarren was past being flustered then.
"Won't you have some potatoes?" he asked, politely.
"Some—what didst thou say?"
"Potatoes. Just try some."
"What strange stuff is that? Will it not give me a palsy, or the falling sickness? Methinks I have heard they were poisonous."
"They are excellent and very wholesome," said Macfarren, helping her, and gently thrusting a fork into her hand. "Sir Walter Raleigh brought them from—from—" he felt a strange hesitation at saying the word "America."