"Will you?" he said. "Be sure the somebody else deserves it, then."
This annoyed me. Because I'm looking for the rainbow key for _him_, not somebody else. "At present I don't happen to know anybody else I'd care to give it to," I remarked.
"Ay," said he, "there's the rub. You know so few. But it will be different when the princess has a dozen knights all in the competition."
"Perhaps other knights won't notice that I'm a princess."
"Judging from what I've observed, I think they'll be quick to notice that."
"Just so. It remains to be seen." His voice sounded sad or bored, so I tried to be tactful for once, like Mrs. West, and changed the subject.
This was the road which Carlyle thought the most beautiful in the kingdom. Going to Mainsriddle and Dalbeattie we skimmed through dark, haunted-looking woods, to sudden glimpses of far-down yellow sands and floating forms of mountains. The tide was running out or running in, veining the floor of gold with misty blue traceries, and making bright pools like bits of broken glass. The trees along our way were a procession of benevolent giants holding green umbrellas over our heads, because they mistook us for expected royalties; and on the smooth white surface of the road they had scattered shadows like torn black Spanish lace. Criffel followed us everywhere, trying jealously to keep us from noticing that the noble mountains of Cumberland were still watching us out of sight, across the Solway Firth. And indeed, Criffel, with some small brother hills he had to-day collected, like the hasty gathering of a clan, did manage to destroy the effect of distance so far as he and his brethren were concerned. He and all the rest, no matter how far off, pushed themselves into the foreground by means of their colour, so violent a purple that it struck at the eyes, and vibrated in the ears like rich wild notes of an organ rolling over the uplands of Scotland. Only the sands and the sea looked distant, though really they were near; and I worried about the groups of cattle gossiping so pleasantly together about their cuds and calves. They had a placid air of ignoring such large facts of life as incoming tides, and could never have read what happened to Mary and her cows on the sands of Dee, a resort only less fashionable in the cattle world than their own.