u an I knew myself."

"Come--you don't even know these people? Then who invited us here?"

"None invited us. We but came; that is all."

"Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. The
effrontery of it is beyond admiration. We blandly march into
a man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility
the sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns out
that we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever venture
to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it was
your home. What will the man say?"

"What will he say? Forsooth what can he say but give thanks?"

"Thanks for what?"

Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise:

"Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words.
Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twice
in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace
his house withal?"

"Well, no--when you come to that. No, it's an even bet that this
is the first time he has had a treat like this."

"Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech
and due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestor
of dogs."

To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so.
It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said:

"The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility together
and be moving."

"Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?"

"We want to take them to their home, don't we?"

"La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the earth!
Each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all these
journeys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that created
life, and thereto death likewise with help of Adam, who by sin
done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon
and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that
serpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto that
evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart
through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst
so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudes
its brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein
all such as native be to that rich estate and--"

"Great Scott!"

"My lord?"

"Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don't
you see, we could distribute these people around the earth in less
time than it is going to take you to explain that