- This was a bright idea. The baron took an old hunting-knife from a cupboard hard by, and having sharpened it on his boot,
- made what boys call "an offer" at his throat. "Hem!" said the baron, stopping short. "Perhaps it's not sharp enough."
- The baron sharpened it again, and made another offer, when his hand was arrested by a loud screaming among the young barons and baronesses,
- who had a nursery in an upstairs tower with iron bars outside the window, to prevent their tumbling out into the moat.
- "If I had been a bachelor," said the baron sighing, "I might have done it fifty times over, without being interrupted.
