“I hate the very name of him.”
“My dear, such a splendid fellow.”
“Detestable boaster.”
“Tut, tut,—a very popular nobleman; just the very man for you, and vastly rich. Now when I heard that he—that gentleman—”
“For God’s sake, Master Eudol, leave your chatter.”
The old merchant for the moment looked a little taken aback. Then he smiled, pulled his goat’s beard, and grew epigrammatic.
“She who wears a gilded shoe,” he said, “will find it pinch in the wearing. Stick to your sandals, my dear, and let your pretty white feet go brown in the sun. Better breathe in the open than freeze in a marble house. Just play the savage and let ambition go hang.”
Igraine thanked him as though she held his counsel to be of the most inestimable value to herself. She was wise enough to know that to please an old man you must take his words in desperate earnest, and appear much caught by his supreme sagacity. Eudol smacked his lips and was comfortably warm within himself. He went on to tell the girl that he was riding to a little country manor that he owned some few leagues from Winchester. He informed her sentimentally that he was a very Virgil over his farm and garden. Igraine thought “Virgil” might well be Greek for “fool,” but she hid her ignorance under her hood. Eudol ran on to dilate on the subtleties of husbandry, making a fine parade of expert phraseology in the doing of it.
“I see you do not follow me,” he said presently. “Young folk are not fond of turning over the sods; they love grass for a scamper, not clay and dull loam. Shall we talk of petticoats or sarcenet that runs down a pretty figure like water? Eh, my dear? You set the tune, I’ll follow.”
Igraine contented herself with keeping him to his hobby.