“I am going to wind this horn,” said Sir Percival to Gorbo (he meant, to blow it). “And if you will oblige me by pretending to be my squire, I shall think it very nice of you.”
“Yes, I’ll be your squire,” replied Gorbo, quite interested. He lifted Sylvia down to get her out of the way in case battle should take place suddenly. “I’d like to—Jump down, Joe—I’ll tell them you’ll take on any six of them and----”
“Not so brisk, please,” said the knight. “What I want you to do is to say that I am the famed Sir Percival and—and so on and so forth. Give them the idea that I am something of a terror. Don’t know what fear is, and that sort of thing. You see I don’t want to injure anybody if it can be avoided, and if any knight prefers to give in without fighting, why, let him do so by all means and save needless bloodshed. Do you get the idea?”
“Yes, I think so. Hot stuff, as it were. Now blow hard.”
Sir Percival blew at the small end of the slug-horn and a long melancholy note came out of the other end. Then there was silence for a time; but at length they heard the sound of slow shuffling footsteps coming to the gate.
“Nothing to-day, thank you kindly,” said a weak and quavering voice.
“Open, varlet!” cried Sir Percival angrily. “What discourtesy is this to keep a champion waiting at your gate? Open, I say, lest I believe that the knights of this castle fear to meet me.”
“Save you, good sir!” replied the quavering voice, “here are no knights, none at all, nor indeed anybody but me and my old dame Margery who look after the castle while the family are away visiting cousins, though we should be glad if they had taken us too for a change of air would do us both good who have been in this same castle until we are sick and tired of the shape of it, to say nothing of the damp which has settled in old Margery’s bones so that she goes ever doubled up and----”
“Look here,” interrupted Gorbo, putting his hands to his mouth and shouting through the keyhole, “this is the valiant Sir Percival, who has slain so many knights that he has forgotten how many, to say nothing of dragons and such like. And I am his valiant squire, Gorbo, who is famed for a big appetite, and we have with us two children and a little dog who are also hungry, and the question is whether you are going to be a sport and give us something to eat or whether you are simply going to drive us into smashing up this castle.”
“Nay, be not rash, good squire,” replied the voice. “I’ll open the gate and let you in, for my master hath bidden me give food and drink to wayfarers that need it and especially to those who are liable to damage his stronghold if it be denied them.”
The door opened, and to their astonishment there appeared before them, not a doddering old henchman, but a pert young man dressed in the brilliant and fantastic costume of a jester, with one leg of his tights red and the other yellow, and who seemed, from his immoderate laughter, to be having the time of his life.
“Ha, ha!” he cried, joyously, leaping out and slapping Sir Percival on the nose with a bladder tied to the end of a stick. “Did I not befool thee, thou pumpkin face? Even now your jaw is dropped and your eyes goggle with wonder and you have a general resemblance (saving your presence) to a parboiled codfish. Laugh, thou jingling hundredweight of ill-fitting harness”--hitting him again--“and grant this to be a pleasing jest.”