The men had carried her up from the ford and set her at her own seeking in a shady place in the garden where she might lie at peace. It was a pleasant nook enough where they had set her bed, a patch of bright green grass with a bank of flowers on one hand and dense laurel hedge hiding it from the track to the house on the other. A vine trained upon poles raised a pleasant pavilion there. Autumn would soon be whispering in the woods, and already some few leaves were ribbed with gold and maroon. Eudol played the physician and made a very critical examination of her ankle. He prided himself, among his other vanities, on having studied Galen, and since the healing craft is often a matter of phenomenal words and wise nothings, Eudol might have outphysicked Gildas at his own game. The art of medicine is the art of hypocrisy, and the sage apothecary is often a broken reed trembling in the wind of ignorance. Eudol, having no reputation at stake, pronounced Igraine's hurt to be a mere strain of the ankle-joint, and, as it happened, he was right. He swathed her foot in wet linen and set it on a pillow, while the woman who kept house for him, a red-cheeked piece of buxomness, brought wine and food-stuff on a tray. Seeing a nun's habit the good woman was comforted, and indulged Igraine with many smiles and much motherly care. Eudol came and sat beside her with a great book on his knee, Virgil's Bucolics, as he told her, and writ most learnedly for the edification of the wise. Eudol read very little of the book that afternoon. The volume abode with him for effect, but he preferred rather to dwell upon the more Ovidian interest of the girl beside him, and to talk to her in his familiar and fatherly fashion. He made many sly attempts to get the purpose of her pilgrimage from her, but Igraine had enough wit to keep him discreetly mystified on the subject. She was wondering all the while how long her strained ankle would keep her to her bed. Eudol smothered her with offers of hospitality. "On my word you shall not be dull," he said, "though there is only an old man to entertain you. One day you shall ride out in a litter to my vineyards, another you shall be carried out a-hunting. I have a little wench here who can harp and sing like a mermaid. By the poets, I can make you quite a merry time." Igraine made the best smile she could, and thanked him. "You must not put yourself out for me." "Nonsense." "You are very good." Eudol shook his finger with most earnest expression. "My dear lady, it is duty, duty," he said.