“Your names, all of you? and your village?” cried one of them, breathlessly. The owner of the boat drew himself up.
“My name and village you can see painted there, if you can read, Mr Soldier,” he replied; “and I should like to know why I should be catechised because I allow my son and his wife and child and his wife’s aunt to find seats on the flax there?”
“You are sure of their identity?” pursued the questioner, rather confused.
“Sure? My good young man, I think you must have been visiting the tavern too often lately to ask me such a question. Do you think I don’t know my own son, and daughter-in-law, and grandson, and—and sister-in-law? If you have come here to insult honest farmers, I’ll complain to the magistrates.”
“All right,” the soldier explained hastily. “It’s only a form; but we were ordered not to let any one pass without it. Good-bye, father, and your son, and your daughter-in-law, and your grandson, and your great-grandmother’s cousin’s aunt, good-bye!”
“Thracia is going to ruin,” observed the farmer solemnly to Cyril, as they got out the oars, “when any young jackanapes in uniform thinks he can make fun of a man old enough to be his grandfather. Move out of the way, young woman.” It was the Queen whom he addressed, and she turned mutely and pointed to her tongue. He looked at her with something like disgust.
“He wants you to move to the next bale, Anna,” said Cyril, in Thracian, but with an imperative gesture which she understood and obeyed.
“Dumb, is she?” grunted the old man. “Is she deaf as well?”
“She can understand me, as you see,” returned Cyril; “but I doubt whether you could make her hear.”
“How do you make her understand?”