"MacAvoy,.R.A.-.Tea.With.The.Black.Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

course. Not San Francisco.

"You have been to Ireland?" she asked. But she
guessed his answer before he could speak.

"What did you do there?"

His eyebrows lifted, and the lean face softened in
memories. "I was looking for something." There was a
silence Martha allowed to grow. Then he spoke again,

with animation.

"Mrs. Macnamara—it is Mrs. Macnamara, if I remem-
ber?"

"It was."

He did not falter. "Mrs. Macnamara, have you heard
the story of Thomas Rhymer?"

"I know the ballad," she admitted. "But it's not Irish."

"That ballad? No. That is Walter Scott. But the story
itself is Irish, I believe. It was an Irishman who told it to

me.

"Listen!," he began, and as he spoke he stirred his
spoon in his cup with a silver sound. Mrs. Macnamara
noted this gesture with amusement. She was sure that
Mr. Long had not taken sugar.

"You know how Thomas the Rhymer was taken off by
the queen of Elfland on her horse of the nine-and-fifty
bells. How they swam the river of blood, and how she
showed him the roads to heaven and hell, avoiding both
of them to take a third. How he served her seven years
in delightful capacity, and how in the end his poor
reward was that he was made incapable of lying. This
much is what got back to Scott."

"There is more?"

TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON 7

"Obviously. The ballad is cut off just where it becomes
interesting. It does not touch on the predicament of a
bard bereft of his stock in trade—flattery. It does not so
much as mention the Rhymer's son."