"Where is she?" he asked feebly.
"She?" I set down my broom, fetched him a pannikin-ful of milk, and
knelt beside him while he drank it. "If you mean the Princess
Camilla, she has gone back to her mountain, leaving us in peace."
"Camilla?" he murmured the word.
"And a very suitable name, it seems to me. There was, if you
remember, a young lady in the Aeneid of pretty much the same
disposition."
"Camilla," he repeated, and again but a little above his breath.
"Your father . . . he is helping her?"
"Helping her?" I echoed. "My dear lad, if ever a young woman could
take care of herself it is the Princess. . . . And as for my father
helping her, she has packed him off northwards across the mountains
with a flea in his ear. And, talking of fleas--" I went on with a
glance at the hut.
He brought me to a full stop with a sudden grip on my arm,
astonishingly strong for a wounded man.
"Nay, lad--nay!" I coaxed him, but slipped a hand under him as he
insisted and sat upright.
"She needs help, I tell you," he gasped. "Needs help . . . it was
for help I ran when--when--"
"But what dreaming is this? My dear fellow, she makes prisoners of
us, shoots you down when you try to escape, treats me worse than a
dog, banishes us to this hut which--not to put too fine a point on
it--is a pigs'-sty, and particularly filthy at that.
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