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Di and Bobby had walked home with Jenny. "Look here," said Dwight Herbert, "who is it sits home and has ice cream put in her lap, like a queen?" "Vanilly or chocolate?" Mrs. Bett demanded. "Chocolate, mammal" Ina cried, with the breeze in her voice. "Vanilly sets better," Mrs. Bett said. They sat with her on the porch while she ate. Ina rocked on a creaking board.
"Yes, yes; but what am I to do for you?" asked Ina, getting a little uneasy and suspicious. "What! didn't I tell you?" said Ashmead, with cool effrontery. "Why, only to sing for me in this little opera, that is all." And he put his hands in his pockets, and awaited thunder-claps. "Oh, that is all, is it?" said Ina, panting a little, and turning two great, reproachful eyes on him.
"Tell you what we'll do!" said Dwight. "Nin and I'll reminisce a little." "Do!" cried Mr. Plow. This gentle fellow was always excited by life, so faintly excited by him, and enjoyed its presentation in any real form. Ninian had unerringly selected a dwarf rocker, and he was overflowing it and rocking. "Take this chair, do!" Ina begged. "A big chair for a big man."
"I have ever heard of that royal house as the noblest and greatest in all England at least since Ina of Wessex died; but I have been abroad for these five years, and I know not what they have brought." "Why, then," he answered, laughing, "it is I who must tell you of them. There was once a fair little playmate of mine in Offa's house, his youngest daughter Etheldrida.
Then it was she uttered the cry that made Vizard quake at the door, and shook for a moment even Rhoda's nerves, though, as a rule, they were iron in a situation of this kind. It had all come back to Ina Klosking. After that piteous cry she never said a word. She did nothing but think, and put her hand to her head. And soon after midnight she began to talk incoherently.
"Well," said Ina, "my part, I think the most awful thing is to have somebody one loves keep secrets from one. No wonder folks get crabbed and spiteful with such treatment." "Mamma!" Monona shouted from her room. "Come and hear me say my prayers!"
And that knowledge I had tested on the field more than once, for Ina had no less trouble with his neighbours than any other king in England, whether in matters of raiding to be stopped or tribute to be enforced. Since I was too old to serve the queen as page any longer I had been of his bodyguard, and where he went was not always the safest place on a field for us who shielded him.
It had been legal there for five centuries and a half, having been introduced by statute in 1261. Before that time, the ordeals by fire and by water were the regular legal ones in England. These were known even to the Anglo Saxon law, being mentioned in the code of Ina, A. D., about 700.
It was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the heath not improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of the Wessex King Ina, presented to after-ages as Lear. Gertrude Lodge talked most, Rhoda replying with monosyllabic preoccupation.
While she sat there, propped high, and inhaling the pure air, Vizard conveyed his little choir, by another staircase, into the antechamber; and, under his advice, they avoided preludes and opened in full chorus with Jackson's song of praise. At the first burst of sacred harmony, Ina Klosking was observed to quiver all over.
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