I turned, and there was Erpwald, with a very red face, trying to overtake me, and I waited for him.
"A word with you, Thane," he said, out of breath.
"As many as you will.

What is it ?" "Wait until I get my breath," he said.

"One would think that you were in a desperate hurry, by the pace you go.

Plague on all such fast walkers!" That made me laugh, and he smiled across his broad face in return.
"It is all very well to grin," he said, straightening his face suddenly to a blankness; "but what I have to say concerns a mighty serious matter." "Well, then, get it done with," I answered, trying not to smile yet more.
"I don't rightly know how to begin," he said in a hesitating kind of way.

"Words are as hard to manage as a drove of forest swine, and I am a bad hand at talking.