“Pray allow me,” I said, snatching up another boot that stood on the table at his side and plunging a spare brush into the blacking. “That one’s done,” said he, pipe in mouth. “Ah, yes--I beg your pardon. Are these----?” I took up another pair, with some diffidence, for the done ones and the undone ones had a singular resemblance to each other. “No. But you’d better take off your coat, Baron--it’s hot work.” So I did. And much relieved to hear by his tone that he bore me no ill will I joined him on the edge of the table; and if any one had told me a week before that a day was at hand when I should clean boots I would, without hesitation, [Illustration: _Thus, as it were, with blacking, did I cement my friendship with Lord Sigismund_] have challenged him to fight, the extremity of the statement’s incredibleness leaving me no choice but to believe it a deliberate insult. Thus, as it were with blacking, did I cement my friendship with Lord Sigismund. I think he thought me a thoroughly good fellow who was only, like so many people, a little stiff at breakfast, as I sat there helping him, my hat pushed back off my forehead, one leg swinging, and while I brushed and blackened chatting cheerfully about the inferior position the clergy occupy to the German eye. I am sure he was interested, for he paused several times in his work and looked at me over his spectacles with much attention. As for the two nondescripts, they never took their exceedingly round and unblinking eyes off me for an instant. CHAPTER VI It was twelve o’clock before we left Grib’s (or Grip’s) Common, lurching off it by another grassy lane down into the road in the direction of Mereworth, and leaving, as we afterward discovered, several portions of our equipment behind us. “What a lovely, sparkling world!” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, coming and walking beside me. I was struggling with the tempers of my very obstinate horse, so could only gasp a brief assent. The road was narrow, and wound along hard and smooth between hedges she seemed to find attractive, for every few yards she stopped to pull something green out of them and take it along with her. The heavy rain in the night had naturally left things wet, and there being a bright sun the drops on the blades of grass and on the tips of the leaves could not help sparkling, but there was nothing remarkable in that, and I would not have noticed it if she had not looked round with such apparent extreme delight and sniffed in the air as if she were in a first-class perfumery shop _Unter den Linden_ where there really are things worth sniffing. Also she appeared to think there was something very wonderful about the sky, which was just the ordinary blue one has a right to expect in summer sprinkled over with the usual number of white fine-weather clouds, for she gazed up at that too, and evidently with the greatest pleasure. “_Schwärmerisch_,” said I to myself; and was internally slightly amused.