"
"It is true that I was addressing her in her image."
"Very well; that's a proof positive to me that you had nobody else to
address--a most unwholesome state of affairs. How does my beard strike
you? Black as blackness, I fancy."
He was right. I assured him that it was now as black as Erebus and
pleased him extremely. I told him, however, that I thought he would have
more difficulty with the rest of his description, which gave him a
middle size and a cold in the head. He was, in person, gigantic, and in
health appeared to be as sound as a bell.
"I shall get through," said the friar, "on my beard, and where that goes
I can follow as easily as a tomcat his head. But I have a trick of
bending the knees which will serve me for some hundreds of yards--and if
you suppose that I can't snivel you are very much mistaken. Listen to
this." He hung his head, looked earnestly at the ground: then he
sniffed. Sniffed, do I say? It was as if all the secret rills of the
broad earth had been summoned from their founts. No noise more miserably
watery could have proceeded from a nose. He beamed upon me. "Am I a wet
blanket?" he cried. "Now, friend, shall we go?" He had packed up his
tools in his begging-bag and stood ready to depart. I reminded him that
I had no papers.
"That need not disturb you at all," he said. "You pass in as my convert.
All you have to do is to do nothing and keep your mouth shut. If you
cannot speak you cannot answer; that is good logic, I hope.
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