Chapter 4 — CHAPTER IV.<br/>SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST

It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully told;
but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference; it was
pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.

Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused the
rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality. He tied some
metal mugs to a dog’s tail and turned him loose, and he tore around and
around the place in a frenzy of fright, with all the other dogs bellowing
after him and battering and crashing against everything that came in their
way and making altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din
and turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed till
the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and wallowed on the
floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children. Sir Dinadan was
so proud of his exploit that he could not keep from telling over and over
again, to weariness, how the immortal idea happened to occur to him; and
as is the way with humorists of his breed, he was still laughing at it
after everybody else had got through.