toweling,
Let her preside at the disemboweling."

All was accordingly got ready: the towel, the most antique ewer, even
the jennet, piebald, black-barred, cream-coated, pink-eyed--and only
then, on the day before the party, was the Duke's pleasure signified to
his lady.

And the little Duchess--paler and paler every day--said she would not
go! Her eyes, that used to leap wide in flashes, now just lifted their
long lashes, as if too weary even for _him_ to light them; and she duly
acknowledged his forethought for her,

"But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,
Of the weight by day and the watch by night,
And much wrong now that used to be right;"

and, in short, utterly declined the "disemboweling."

But everything was arranged! The Duke was nettled. Still she persisted:
it was hardly the time . . .

The huntsman knew what took place that day in the Duchess's room,
because Jacynth, who was her tire-woman, was waiting within call outside
on the balcony, and since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, the
casement that Jacynth could peep through, an adorer of roses could peep
through also.

Well, the Duke "stood for a while in a sultry smother," and then "with a
smile that partook of the awful," turned the Duchess over to his mother
to learn her duty, and hear the truth. She learned it all, she heard it
all; but somehow or other it ended at last; the old woman, "licking her
whiskers," passed out, and the Duke, who had waited to hear the lecture,
passed out after her, making (he hoped) a face like Nero or Saladin--at
any rate, he showed a very stiff back.

However, next day the company mustered. The weather was execrable--fog
that you might cut with an axe; and the Duke rode out "in a perfect
sulkiness." But suddenly, as he looked round, the sun ploughed up the
woolly mass, and drove it in all directions, and looking through the
courtyard arch, he saw a troop of Gipsies on their march, coming with
the annual gifts to the castle. For every year, in this North land, the
Gipsies come to give "presents" to the Dukes--presents for which an
equivalent is always understood to be forthcoming.

And marvellous the "presents" are! These Gipsies can do anything with
the earth, the ore, the sand. Snaffles, whose side-bars no brute can
baffle, locks that would puzzle a locksmith, horseshoes that turn on a
swivel, bells for the sheep . . . all these are good, but what they can
do with sand!