Now, of course, this is not what little Whelpdale is trying to tell the Baron up in the study; for everybody in Wantley knew all about the legend except one person, and that was Miss Elaine, Sir Godfrey’s only daughter, eighteen years old at the last Court of Piepoudre, when her father (after paying all the farmers for all the cows and sheep they told him had been eaten by the Dragon since the last Court) had made his customary proclamation, to wit: his good-will and protection to all his tenantry; and if any man, woman, child, or other person, caused his daughter, Miss Elaine, to hear anything about the legend, such tale-bearer should be chained to a tree, and kept fat until the Dragon found him and ate him. So everybody obligingly kept the Baron’s secret.
Sir Godfrey is just this day returned from France with some famous tuns of wine, and presents for Elaine and Mrs. Mistletoe. His humour is (or was, till Whelpdale, poor wretch! answered the bell) of the best possible. And now, this moment, he is being told by the luckless Buttons that the Dragon of Wantley has taken to drinking, as well as eating, what does not belong to him; has for the last three nights burst the big gates of the wine-cellar that open on the hillside the Manor stands upon; that a hogshead of the Baron’s best Burgundy is going; and that two hogsheads of his choicest Malvoisie are gone!
One hundred and twenty-eight gallons in three nights’ work! But I suppose a fire-breathing Dragon must be very thirsty.
There was a dead silence in the study overhead, and old Popham’s calves were shaking loose as he waited.
“And so you stood by and let this black, sneaking, prowling, thieving” (here the Baron used some shocking expressions which I shall not set down) “Dragon swill my wine?”
“St—st—stood by, your ludship?” said little Whelpdale. “No, sir; no one didn’t do any standing by, sir. He roared that terrible, sir, we was all under the bed.”
“Now, by my coat of mail and great right leg!” shouted Sir Godfrey. The quaking Popham heard no more. The door of the private staircase flew open with a loud noise, and down came little Whelpdale head over heels into the buttery. After him strode Sir Godfrey in full mail armour, clashing his steel fists against the banisters. The nose-piece of his helmet was pushed up to allow him to speak plainly,—and most plainly did he speak, I can assure you, all the way down stairs, keeping his right eye glaring upon Popham in one corner of the buttery, and at the same time petrifying Whelpdale with his left. From father to son, the Disseisins had always been famous for the manner in which they could straddle their eyes; and in Sir Godfrey the family trait was very strongly marked.
Arrived at the bottom, he stopped for a moment to throw a ham through the stained-glass window, and then made straight for Popham. But the head Butler was an old family servant, and had learned to know his place.
With surprising agility he hopped on a table, so that Sir Godfrey’s foot flew past its destined goal and caught a shelf that was loaded with a good deal of his wedding china. The Baron was far too dignified a person to take any notice of this mishap, and he simply strode on, out of the buttery, and so through the halls of the Manor, where all who caught even the most distant sight of his coming, promptly withdrew into the privacy of their apartments.