that way, at a time like this.
To business now--and sharp's the word. Who is to take the
aristocracy home?"

"Even their friends. These will come for them from the far parts
of the earth."

This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and the
relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. She would remain to
deliver the goods, of course.

"Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully
ended, I will go home and report; and if ever another one--"

"I also am ready; I will go with thee."

This was recalling the pardon.

"How? You will go with me? Why should you?"

"Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor.
I may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field
some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me.
I were to blame an I thought that that might ever hap."

"Elected for the long term," I sighed to myself. "I may as well
make the best of it." So then I spoke up and said:

"All right; let us make a start."

While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave that
whole peerage away to the servants. And I asked them to take
a duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainly
lodged and promenaded; but they considered that that would be
hardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave departure
from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. A departure from
custom--that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing any
crime but that. The servants said they would follow the fashion,
a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance; they would
scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then the
evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible.
It was a kind of satire on Nature: it was the scientific method,
the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in
a stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it and
tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the family
had introduced successively for a hundred years.

The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims.
It was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for it
was hourly being borne in upon me now, that if I would govern
this country wisely, I must be posted in the details of its life,
and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny.

This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that it
had in it a sample of