“Aye, but I do mind,” he answered seriously. “I mind infinitely, because ’tis your mind needeth a great deal o’ painful care. ’S life, girl, were your mind the peer o’ your body you’d be a creature without peer. The which, sounding paradoxical, is yet very truth.” “’Stead of which,” she retorted angrily, “I am only a buxom country wench ... a poor maid, as you think, all body an’ no soul, an’ talk of as she were a piece o’ cattle! Oh, I could cry wi’ shame, I could!” “Then I shall kiss you, Rose!” “You—ah, you wouldn’t dare!” “Not unless you cry, child. I can endure a woman’s scorn, her fleerings, even her caresses—but her tears melt my adamantine fortitude quite. So pray do not weep, Rose. And as for your sweet country ways, your rustic simplicity, God bless you for ’em, child. With your goddess-form uncramped by cursed, ’prisoning whalebone—with no rusks or busks or such damned contrivances to pinch your figure to the prevailing mode you are as the hand of Nature moulded you, a woman apt to motherhood, and therefore to be reverenced ... and a curse on all rusks.” “They are called busks, your honour, and I wear ’em!” she retorted. “Howbeit, as you walk beside me now, Rose, free-limbed as a nymph, fragrant with naught but health, you are a thousand times more alluring than any modish lady laced to suffocation and ready to sink, to swoon, to languish and vapour accordingly on the least provocation.” “I ’spose you’ve endured a vast deal o’ such ladylike weaknesses, sir?” she questioned. “To an infinity o’ weariness!” sighed Sir John. “That is to say, my master hath, and I ha’ suffered with him.” “Your master be a great beau, my mistress says, and mighty successful wi’ the ladies—French ladies! But my mistress do say as Sir John Dering’s nothing in particular to look at—a plain, insignificant little man!” “Insignificant, girl!” Sir John nearly tripped over one of his spurs. “Insignificant!” he repeated. “Oh, begad! But then, child, ’twas easy to recognise your mistress for a person of little taste and no discernment, poor soul! An insignificant little man!” he repeated for the second time, and then laughed joyously. “And yet, Rose, sink me but she’s right!” quoth he. “For in many particulars you behold in me the very reverse and opposite of Sir John Dering.” “And yet his clothes do fit ’ee to admiration!” she added. “Hum!” quoth Sir John, and walked in silence awhile and, beholding the moon near to setting, sighed; as her tender light waned, his gloom waxed, for the countryside seemed to lose something of its magic allurement; moreover, his long riding-boots, elegantly light though they were, began to irk him, and the faint, monotonous jingle of his spurs irritated him so that at last he must needs pause to unbuckle them. “A pedestrian in spurs is a pitiable object, Rose,” he explained, “and their jingle upon a toilsome road is deuced dismal!” “An’ I be that weary I could weep!” she sighed.