“Amo, amas, you know, and runnin’ about like hooligans: what would you advise?” “But about these boys and all this Latin and that,” added the old gentleman. Must have been a good twenty-five miles as he ran.” Found a chap called Sir Bruce Saunce Pité choppin’ off a maiden’s head in Weedon Bushes, ran him to Mixbury Plantation in the Bicester, where he doubled back, and lost him in Wicken Wood. Sir Ector said, “Had a good quest today?” It was a third of the way down the left-hand leaf, he said. He attributed to this weakness the fact that he could never get beyond the Future Simple of Utor. Sir Grummore Grummursum, who was staying the night because he had been benighted out questin’ after a specially long run, said that when he was their age he was swished every mornin’ because he would go hawkin’ instead of learnin’. When I was their age I was doin’ all this Latin and stuff at five o’clock every mornin’. When they had got rid of the governess, Sir Ector said, “After all, damn it all, we can’t have the boys runnin’ about all day like hooligans–after all, damn it all? Ought to be havin’ a first-rate eddication, at their age. Kay was not bladed, although he often went wrong.
It was horseplay, a sort of joke like being shaved when crossing the line. If you did the wrong thing at the mort or the undoing, for instance, you were bent over the body of the dead beast and smacked with the flat side of a sword. In the afternoons the programme was: Mondays and Fridays, tilting and horsemanship Tuesdays, hawking Wednesdays, fencing Thursdays, archery Saturdays, the theory of chivalry, with the proper measures to be blown on all occasions, terminology of the chase and hunting etiquette. They found out afterwards that she had been in a lunatic hospital for three years. Eventually she offered to show it to Sir Ector, who was Kay’s father, had hysterics and was sent away. It was believed to be where she sat down, and to have been caused by sitting on some armour at a picnic by mistake. The governess had red hair and some mysterious wound from which she derived a lot of prestige by showing it to all the women of the castle, behind closed doors. Kay was not called anything but Kay, as he was too dignified to have a nickname and would have flown into a passion if anybody had tried to give him one. The Wart was called the Wart because it more or less rhymed with Art, which was short for his real name. She did not rap Kay’s knuckles, because when Kay grew older he would be Sir Kay, the master of the estate. The governess was always getting muddled with her astrolabe, and when she got specially muddled she would take it out of the Wart by rapping his knuckles. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was Court Hand and Summulae Logicales, while the rest of the week it was the Organon, Repetition and Astrology.
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