Ah, my sword, my dainty headsman?
my sweet split-rib?
my razor of infidel beards! is the rust to eat thine edge off, and am I never more to wield thee in battle?
What is the use of a shield on a wall, or a lance that has a cobweb for a pennon?
O Richard, my good king, would I could hear once more thy voice in the front of the onset! Bones of Brian the Templar?
would ye could rise from your grave at Templestowe, and that we might break another spear for honor and--and--".

.

.
"And REBECCA," he would have said; but the knight paused here in rather a guilty panic: and her Royal Highness the Princess Rowena (as she chose to style herself at home) looked so hard at him out of her china-blue eyes, that Sir Wilfrid felt as if she was reading his thoughts, and was fain to drop his own eyes into his flagon.
In a word, his life was intolerable.

The dinner hour of the twelfth century, it is known, was very early; in fact, people dined at ten o'clock in the morning: and after dinner Rowena sat mum under her canopy, embroidered with the arms of Edward the Confessor, working with her maidens at the most hideous pieces of tapestry, representing the tortures and martyrdoms of her favorite saints, and not allowing a soul to speak above his breath, except when she chose to cry out in her own shrill voice when a handmaid made a wrong stitch, or let fall a ball of worsted.

It was a dreary life.