Tales of the Long Bow
smiling, "and its that horrible red mud that takes so long to dry. It's no use trying to brush it till———"
"I bring you the Golden Fleece, or at any rate the Golden Pig-Skin," he cried in lyric ecstasy. "I have endured the labours; I have achieved the quest. I have made the Hampshire Hog as legendary as the Calydonian Boar. They forbade me to drive it on foot, and I drove it in a car, disguised as a pug. They forbade me to bring it in a car, and I brought it in a railway-train, disguised as an invalid. They forbade me to use a railway-train, and I took the wings of the morning and rose to the uttermost parts of the air; by a way secret and pathless and lonely as the wilful way of love. I have made my romance immortal. I have written your name upon the sky. What do you say to me now? I have turned a Pig into a Pegasus. I have done impossible things."
"I know you have," she said, "but somehow I can't help liking you for all that."
"But you can't help liking me," he repeated in a hollow voice. "I have stormed heaven, but still I am not so bad. Hercules can be tolerated in spite of his Twelve Labours. St. George can be forgiven for killing the Dragon. Woman, is this the way I am treated in the
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