Although the day was far from being one that incited toward hilarity, Armstrong laughed, and turned his dripping face up to the storm. The girl joined him, but with less of merriment in her tones.
“You will never persuade me,” he said, “that there is a tinge of selfishness about you, or that you ever think of yourself when there is a friend to think of.”
“There is worse to come,” she went on. “I must beg of you to sacrifice that moustache. You will never get through Carlisle with that on your lip. Anyone who has ever seen you before would recognize you now, in spite of cloak and cap.”
“Madam, you ask too much. The kingdom of England may fall, but this moustache, never.”
“Really,” laughed the girl. “If you saw it at this moment you would not be so proud of it. It has drooped and wilted in the rain like a faded flower. ’Twere better done away with, for it will mark you out from the smooth-faced troopers who throng Carlisle.”
William somewhat wistfully wrung the water from it, and attempted to draw it out across his cheeks.
“Madam, I suspect your design. One by one you have depleted me of what goes to make up a Borderer, and gradually you have reduced me to the commonplace level of those crop-eared villains who are fighting against their King. Then, when I come to you and say, ‘I beseech you to fulfill your promise to me,’ you will reply, ‘Away, Hezekiah, I know you not.’”
“’T is near to that point now, and a little more or less will make slight difference with me, while it will greatly aid your passage through Carlisle.”
“Would it not be well to have my ears cropped also?”
“They are somewhat prominent, now that your locks are gone. I wish I had brought those shears with me. You see now why I must leave you. Oh, the vanity of man! The self-conceit of woman is a molehill compared with a mountain. But take courage, William. I shall not be near you when the deed is done, and the moustache sacrificed, and you will wait in Scotland until it grows again. Perhaps by that time our English troubles will be finished, and thus Armstrong and England will be their true selves at the same moment.”