Whit, nodding silent agreement at them, finished, “You’d think the man would clank when he walked. You wouldn’t want a patroller to fall into water over his head on his way to his wedding, I’ll say.” His own brows rose in gruesome enthusiasm. “You suppose he’s killed anybody with that arsenal? ’Spect he must have, sometime or another. That’s a right sobering collection of scars he has, I saw when we were down washing up. Though I suppose he’s had a long time to accumulate ’em.” He added after another contemplative moment, “Do you think he’s getting nervous ’bout the wedding? He don’t hardly show it, but with him, how would you tell?”

With Whit as a helper, it was a wonder Dag wasn’t frenzied by now, Fawn thought tartly. “Tell him”—Fawn’s tongue hovered between yes and no, remembering just what all she had seen Dag kill with those weapons—“tell him just the war knife.” In case it was nerves and the weapons a consolation. “Tell him it can stand for the rest of them, all right? We’ll know.”

“All right.” Whit did not take himself off at once, but stood scratching his head.

“Did the shirt fit him good?” Fawn asked.

“Oh, yeah, I guess.”

“You guess? Didn’t you look? Agh! Useless to ask you, I suppose.”

“He liked it fine. Kept touchin’ it with his fingertips peekin’ out of those bandages, anyhow, like he liked the feel. But what I want explained is—you know, I had to help him button and unbutton his trousers. So how in the green world has he been managing them for the past week? ’Cause I haven’t never seen him going around undone. And I don’t care how much of a sorcerer he is, he has to have been doin’ the necessary some time…”

“Whit,” said Fawn, “go away.”

Ginger and Filly, thinking this through, looked at Fawn’s flushing face and began to giggle like steam kettles.

“Because,” Whit, never one to take a hint, forged on, “I know it wasn’t me or Fletch or Pa, and it couldn’t have been the twins, who didn’t warm to him a bit. Suppose it could have been Nattie, but really, I think it must have been you, and how—ow!” He ended in a yelp as Nattie smacked him firmly and accurately across the knees with her cane.

“Whit, if you don’t go find yourself a chore, I’ll find you one,” she told him. “Don’t you go embarrassin’ Fawn’s patroller with all your supposin’, or you’ll have me to answer to, and I will be here tomorrow.”

Whit, daunted at last, took himself out, saying placatingly, “I’ll say just the knife, right.”