en anger, and tears in her eyes at the words
she spoke--"you have clean forgotten him!"

"Ah, you mean the jackanapes. And how is the little champion?"

"Like the lads of Wamfray, aye for ill, and never for good," said my
master; but she frowned on him, and said--

"Now you ask, because I forced you on it; but, sir, I take it very ill
that you have so short a memory for a friend. Now, tell me, in all the
time since you left us at Chinon, how often have you thought of him?"

"Nigh as often as I thought of you," I answered. "For when you came into
my mind (and that was every minute), as in a picture, thither too came
your playfellow, climbing and chattering, and holding out his little bowl
for a comfit."

"Nay, then you thought of me seldom, or you would have asked how he
does."

Here she turned her face from me, half in mock anger. But, just as it is
with children, so it was with Elliot, for indeed my dear was ever much of
a child, wherefore her memory is now to me so tender. And as children
make pretence to be in this humour or that for sport, and will affect to
be frighted till they really fear and weep, so Elliot scarce knew how
deep her own humour went, and whether she was acting like a player in a
Mystery, or was in good earnest. And if she knew not rightly what her
humour was, far less could I know, so that she was ever a puzzle to me,
and kept me in a hundred pretty doubts and dreads every day. Alas! how
sorely, through all these years, have I longed to hear her rebuke me in
mirth, and put me adread, and laugh at me again I for she was, as it
were, wife and child to me, at once, and I a child with her, and as happy
as a child.

Thus, nothing would now jump with her humour but to be speaking of her
jackanapes, and how he would come louting and leaping to welcome her, and
forsake her old kinswoman, who had followed with them to Tours. And she
had much to report concerning his new tricks: how he would leap over a
rod for the Dauphin or the Maid, but not if adjured in the name of the
English King, or the Duke of Burgundy. Also, if you held him, he would
make pretence to bite any that you called Englishman or false Frenchman.
Moreover, he had now been taught to fetch and carry, and would climb into
Elliot's window, from the garden, and bring her little basket of silks,
or whatsoever she desired, or carry it thither, as he was commanded.

"And he wrung the cat's neck," quoth my master; but Elliot bade h