“She _is_ an angel,” said Sir Dinadan, emphatically, so that his mother looked at him curiously. Miss Baffin blushed.
“Angels, my lady, do not come with porous plasters,” said the Professor, smiling.
“I love her already, whether she is angel or woman,” replied Lady Bors, patting Miss Baffin’s arm.
“So do--,” Sir Dinadan did not complete the sentence. It occurred to him that he might perhaps be getting a little too demonstrative.
“The Lady Tilly,” said the Baroness, “has told me something of the adventure which brought you here. Will you be so courteous as to tell us more, and to inform us of that strange and wonderful land from which you have come?”
“Willingly, madam,” replied the Professor. And so, while the meal was in progress, the Professor,--not neglecting the food, for he was really hungry,--tried, in the plainest language he could command, to convey to the minds of his hearers some notion of the marvels of modern civilization. The Baron, Lady Bors, and Sir Dinadan asked many questions, and they more than once expressed the greatest astonishment at the revelations made in the Professor’s narrative.
“I will show you some of these wonders,” said Professor Baffin. “Most happily I have with me in my trunks quite a number of instruments, such as those I have told you of.”
“In your trunks!” exclaimed the Baron. “You do not wear trunks, as we do.”
The Professor at once explained the misapprehension. When he had done, there was heard in the room the twanging of the strings of a rude musical instrument.
“It is the minstrel,” said Sir Dinadan, as the Professor and Miss Baffin looked around.
The bard, after a few preliminary thrums upon an imbecile harp, burst into song. He occupied several moments in reciting a ballad of chivalry, and although his manner was dramatic, his voice was sadly cracked and out of tune.
“Tilly,” said the Professor, “remember to note in your journal that the musical system here is constructed from a defective minor scale, with incorrect intervals. I observed precisely the same characteristics in the song that our Irish nurse, Mary, used to put you to sleep with when you were a baby. I stood outside the chamber door one night, and wrote the strain down as she sang it. This proves that it is very ancient.”