? That were dishonor. I may not
part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field some overmatching
champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me. I were to blame an I thought that
that might ever hap.«
    »Elected for the long term,« I sighed to myself. »I may as well make the
best of it.« So then I spoke up and said:
    »All right. Let us make a start.«
    While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave that whole
peerage away to the servants. And I asked them to take a duster and dust around
a little where the nobilities had mainly lodged and promenaded, but they
considered that that would hardly be worth while, and would moreover be a rather
grave departure from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. A departure from
custom - that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing any crime but
that. The servants said they would follow the fashion, a fashion grown sacred
through immemorial observance: they would scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms
and halls, and then the evidences of the aristocratic visitation would be no
longer visible. It was a kind of satire on Nature; it was the scientific method,
the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in a stratified
record; and the antiquary could dig through it and tell by the remains of each
period what changes of diet the family had introduced successively for a hundred
years.
    The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims. It was not
going our way, but we joined it nevertheless; for it was hourly being borne in
upon me, now, that if I would govern this country wisely, I must be posted in
the details of its life, and not at second hand but by personal observation and
scrutiny.
    This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that it had in it a
sample of about all the upper occupations and professions the country could
show, and a corresponding variety of costume. There were young men and old men,
young women and old women, lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and
horses, and there was not a side saddle in the party; for this specialty was to
remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet.
    It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry, and full of
unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. What they regarded as the
merry tale went the continual round and caused no more embarrassment than it
would have caused in the best English society twelve centuries later.
