"
Whereupon Master Silas did interpose, for the dinner hour was
drawing nigh.
"We cannot do all at once," quoth he. "Coming out of order, it
might harm him. Malt before hops, the world over, or the beer
muddies."
But Sir Thomas was not to be pricked out of his form even by so
shrewd a pricker; and like unto one who heareth not, he continued to
look most graciously on the homely vessel that stood ready to
receive his wisdom.
"Thy mind," said he, "being unprepared for higher cogitations, and
the groundwork and religious duty not being well rammer-beaten and
flinted, I do pass over this supererogatory point, and inform thee
rather, that bucks and swans and herons have something in their very
names announcing them of knightly appurtenance; and (God forfend
that evil do ensue therefrom!) that a goose on the common, or a
game-cock on the loft of a cottager or villager, may be seized,
bagged, and abducted, with far less offence to the laws. In a buck
there is something so gainly and so grand, he treadeth the earth
with such ease and such agility, he abstaineth from all other
animals with such punctilious avoidance, one would imagine God
created him when he created knighthood.
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