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.
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