Page 332 - the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood

ness.
At last the holy friar bade the landlord show him to his
room; but when he heard that he was to bed with a cob-
bler, he was as ill contented a fellow as you could find in all
England, nevertheless there was nothing for it, and he must
sleep there or nowhere; so, taking up his candle, he went
off, grumbling like the now distant thunder. When he came
to the room where he was to sleep he held the light over
Robin and looked at him from top to toe; then he felt bet-
ter pleased, for, instead, of a rough, dirty-bearded fellow, he
beheld as fresh and clean a lad as one could find in a week
of Sundays; so, slipping off his clothes, he also huddled into
the bed, where Robin, grunting and grumbling in his sleep,
made room for him. Robin was more sound asleep, I wot,
than he had been for many a day, else he would never have
rested so quietly with one of the friar’s sort so close beside
him. As for the friar, had he known who Robin Hood was,
you may well believe he would almost as soon have slept
with an adder as with the man he had for a bedfellow.
So the night passed comfortably enough, but at the first
dawn of day Robin opened his eyes and turned his head
upon the pillow. Then how he gaped and how he stared, for
there beside him lay one all shaven and shorn, so that he
knew that it must be a fellow in holy orders. He pinched
himself sharply, but, finding he was awake, sat up in bed,
while the other slumbered as peacefully as though he were
safe and sound at home in Emmet Priory. ‘Now,’ quoth Rob-
in to himself, ‘I wonder how this thing hath dropped into
my bed during the night.’ So saying, he arose softly, so as not

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