‘You think a great deal too much of clothes,’ she said.  ’I am not that kind of girl.’

‘And I am afraid I am that kind of man,’ said I.  ’But do not think of me too harshly for that.  I talked just now of something to remember by.  I have many of them myself, of these beautiful reminders, of these keepsakes, that I cannot be parted from until I lose memory and life.  Many of them are great things, many of them are high virtues—­charity, mercy, faith.  But some of them are trivial enough.  Miss Flora, do you remember the day that I first saw you, the day of the strong east wind?  Miss Flora, shall I tell you what you wore?’

We had both risen to our feet, and she had her hand already on the door to go.  Perhaps this attitude emboldened me to profit by the last seconds of our interview; and it certainly rendered her escape the more easy.

‘O, you are too romantic!’ she said, laughing; and with that my sun was blown out, my enchantress had fled away, and I was again left alone in the twilight with the lady hens.

CHAPTER IX—­THREE IS COMPANY, AND FOUR NONE

The rest of the day I slept in the corner of the hen-house upon Flora’s shawl.  Nor did I awake until a light shone suddenly in my eyes, and starting up with a gasp (for, indeed, at the moment I dreamed I was still swinging from the Castle battlements) I found Ronald bending over me with a lantern.  It appeared it was past midnight, that I had slept about sixteen hours, and that Flora had returned her poultry to the shed and I had heard her not.  I could not but wonder if she had stooped to look at me as I slept.  The puritan hens now slept irremediably; and being cheered with the promise of supper I wished them an ironical good-night, and was lighted across the garden and noiselessly admitted to a bedroom on the ground floor of the cottage.  There I found soap, water, razors—­offered me diffidently by my beardless host—­and an outfit of new clothes.  To be shaved again without depending on the barber of the gaol was a source of a delicious, if a childish joy.  My hair was sadly too long, but I was none so unwise as to make an attempt on it myself.  And, indeed, I thought it did not wholly misbecome me as it was, being by nature curly.  The clothes were about as good as I expected.  The waistcoat was of toilenet, a pretty piece, the trousers of fine kerseymere, and the coat sat extraordinarily well.  Altogether, when I beheld this changeling in the glass, I kissed my hand to him.

‘My dear fellow,’ said I, ‘have you no scent?’

‘Good God, no!’ cried Ronald.  ‘What do you want with scent?’

‘Capital thing on a campaign,’ said I.  ‘But I can do without.’

I was now led, with the same precautions against noise, into the little bow-windowed dining-room of the cottage.  The shutters were up, the lamp guiltily turned low; the beautiful Flora greeted me in a whisper; and when I was set down to table, the pair proceeded to help me with precautions that might have seemed excessive in the Ear of Dionysius.