“With eyebrows?” cried the ballad singer.
“Yes! yes!” said several of the crowd together.
I did not like this sort of attention very well, and I was about to draw my daughter away, when the ballad singers faced with one accord in my direction and began to cry, “Buy our ballads! Ho, master Eyebrows! Buy our ballads! Welcome to Oogh, master Eyebrows!”
The faces and heads of these three fellows were covered with black hair; but I now noticed that not one of them had the vestige of an eyebrow; and I observed further that there was not an eyebrow amongst all the crowd, with the exception only of the boy at my side; and as to him, the people, when they saw him, suddenly fell silent, and backed away from him with something like fear in their eyes. The boy observed it, as I could see, and looked as if he were going to cry again.
“What do we say, brothers,” shouted one of the ballad singers, “what do we say to the damsel in the tattered gown? Shall one of us marry the tattered damsel? Oh, yes, oh, yes! Tra la, tra la,—”
He paused, as if waiting for a laugh; but the crowd did not laugh any more, and my daughter was herself in fact the only one who seemed to be amused. As for myself, I was beginning to be angry.
“We’ll marry the Lady Tatters!” cried the blind man. “O-o-oh!” And he burst into a loud song, in which the other two joined, all three prancing up and down meanwhile in a ridiculous dance. So far as I can recollect it, their song went something like this:
“O Lady Tatters! O Lady Tatters!
We scorn the fellow who basely flatters,
But we can’t help saying that nobody matters