"Why, how is it, John," she asked, speaking with a very slight foreign accent, "how is it that you have not been up at the Castle for these six weeks?"
"Because I got my fill at the town and the Manor, Mistress Bertha," replied the other.
"Ay, that is it!" she exclaimed; "that is it! if every one would but say it. Men go for what they can get; and when they can get their fill at one place, they seek not another. The only difference between madmen and the world is, that madmen tell the truth, and the world conceals it."
"I always tell the truth," cried the half-witted man, caught by the sound of a word connected with one of his rooted ideas; "I always tell the truth; do not I, Mistress Bertha?"
"Yes; but you are only half mad," answered the housekeeper; "for you can sometimes conceal it too. But go in John; go into the Castle; and, if you go through the long back corridor below, you will find my little maid in the room at the end. Bid her give you the cold meat that Lord Harold left after his breakfast."
"After his breakfast!" cried the half-witted man. "He has breakfasted mighty early! But now--oh, I guess it; he has gone to London. I heard her tell him to go."
"Heard who tell him?" demanded Mistress Bertha, with an air of some surprise.
"Why, pretty Mistress Alice Herbert, to be sure," replied the other. "Did not I hear all they said as they came down the walk and through the woods?"
"Nay, then," said the housekeeper, smiling, as far as she was ever known to smile, "I suppose he's gone to buy the wedding ring, and have the marriage settlements drawn up. Methinks he might have told me, too."
"Nay, Mistress Bertha," replied the other, "no wedding rings! no marriage settlements! Mistress Alice is not for him!"
A slight flush came over the pale cheek of her to whom he spoke. "Not for him!" she exclaimed! "Does she refuse him, then!"
"Yes, to be sure," replied John Graves; "every man is refused once in his life. I was refused myself, for that matter; but I was wise, and resolved that I would never be refused again."
"Art thou lying, or art thou speaking truth?" demanded Mistress Bertha, fixing her eyes sternly upon him. "Did she refuse him?"
"Truth!" replied the man: "I always speak truth! She refused him, as sure as I am alive: nothing he could say would move her. I knew it very well, and I told him so before; but he would not believe me."