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"It were jolly work to fall of idle tale-telling, when all the work in the house gapeth for to be done! Thou weary, dreary jade! what art thou after now? Who dost look to, to slave for thee, prithee, my delicate-fingered damsel? Thou shouldst like well, I reckon, to have a serving-maid o' thy heels, for to 'tend to all matter that was not sweet enough for thy high degree!
She called the serving-maid, who came, as it seemed to the anxious woman, with exasperating deliberation. "Jane," she cried, "do you know where the Athletic Club is? Do you know where Centre Street is?" Jane knew neither club nor locality. "I want a message taken there to Dick, and it must go quickly. Don't you think you could run there "
"This is King Harald's son, whom a serving-maid bore to him, and whom he now gives thee as foster-child!" Athelstan straightway took milder thoughts; brought up, and carefully educated Hakon; from whom, and this singular adventure, came, before very long, the first tidings of Christianity into Norway.
He exchanged garments with a serving-maid, and feigned himself to be a maiden skilled in fighting; and having thus laid aside the garb of man and imitated that of woman, he went to the town, calling himself a deserter.
Each, then, thus secretly tendering the other, the young lady, who desired nothing so much as to foregather with him, but had no mind to make any one a confidant of her passion, bethought herself of a rare device to apprize him of the means; to wit, she wrote him a letter, wherein she showed him how he should do to foregather with her on the ensuing day, and placing it in the hollow of a cane, gave the letter jestingly to Guiscardo, saying, 'Make thee a bellows thereof for thy serving-maid, wherewith she may blow up the fire to-night. Guiscardo took the cane and bethinking himself that she would not have given it him nor spoken thus, without some cause, took his leave and returned therewith to his lodging.
But I went further and fared better, and procured a meal of homely succulence, in an unfashionable tavern, in a back street, where the wine was sound, the cutlets tender, and the serving-maid rosy.
Accept a hospitable greeting from me." And she gave him a garland. Cloud-chariot, far gone in love, took the garland and put it around Sandal's neck. And the loving, sidelong glance which she gave him seemed like another garland of blue lotuses. So they pledged themselves without speaking a word. Then a serving-maid came and said to the princess: "Princess, your mother remembers you.
Thus expeditiously could religious conversion be effected when an earthly crown was its guerdon. The poor serving-maid was less open to conviction. In her simple fanaticism she too talked of a crown, and saw it descending from Heaven on her poor forlorn head as the reward, not of apostasy, but of steadfastness.
I then saw what the case was: this was a serving-maid whom the endangered lady had taken into confidence, and who had impressed her lover into service to carry that lady's message. The lady herself must be in that chateau, perhaps a prisoner. My first step must be to find out who were the dwellers in the chateau, and as much of their affairs as the world could tell me.
I was sitting over my dreary little repast, wondering how I should get through the day, and speculating upon the possibility of my release before nightfall, and I had just concluded that I must make up my mind to face another night with the mosquitos and their hardy allies, when, to my great joy, a slatternly serving-maid came lolloping into the room, and announced that a gentleman styling himself "il Conte di Rosenau" had arrived and demanded to see me instantly.
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