Rupert now was facing him steadily enough.
"My lord—" he began.
Then for a moment he hesitated. Indeed he would have been glad to claim the kindred that Merrylips had said was surely his! But he had to speak the truth, and he did it bravely.
"I know not the name of my father nor my mother," he said. "But my nurse said my father's name was Lucas, and he was a captain, and the rest—Merrylips knew the rest and told it unto me."
"Why, this is rare!" cried Dick Fowell, and he seemed angrier even than Munn himself. "Here's a complete trickster for so young a lad! So, you, sirrah, you've drained that little girl dry, and from her prattle have patched up this story of your great kin with which to cozen us."
The chaplain said that Rupert were best confess at once that he was telling a false story. Dick Fowell's brother swore that such a young liar deserved a whipping. Munn Venner, who was as loud as any, vowed that such a tale, of a lost child of Lady Venetia's, was too strange for belief. And all the time Merrylips and Rupert held each other fast by the hand and wondered what they should say next.
But in the midst of this clamor, Lord Caversham himself spoke out.
"When you lads are older," said he,—and even in her distress, Merrylips wondered to hear Dick Fowell and her brother Munn called "lads,"—"you'll know that the stranger a story sound, the likelier it is to be the truth."
While Lord Caversham spoke, he put his arm about Rupert and drew him down to sit upon his knee. At this treatment Rupert stiffened and grew red, for he was not pleased at being handled like a little boy.
"Put back the shirt from your shoulder," my lord bade.