Merrylips

by Beulah Marie Dix

The days before Christmas went fast in that great, busy garrison house of Walsover, and they went fast indeed for Merrylips. So much she had to tell and hear! So many friends she had to greet again!

She found old Roger that had been butler at Larkland. He was carrying a halberd once more in the Walsover garrison, and he was as eager as any young man of them all to fight the rebels. She found Stephen Plasket, who came limping in, the day before Christmas. And a long story he had to tell of the adventures he had met with in making his escape through the Roundhead country! Best of all, for Rupert's sake, she found Claus Hinkel, who had been one of those that had lived through the assault of Monksfield.

Claus took it all as a matter of course that Rupert was at last restored to his kinsfolk. Ja, wohl, 'twas bound to happen some day, he told her. And now, in time, Rupert would be a captain like his father before him, and he, Claus, would ride in his troop.

"For that I can do, gracious fräulein," the dull-witted fellow said. "My lord, your high-born father, would have made me a corporal, and more, perchance. But I said 'No! no!' Here I am well placed, and can do my part. But if I were set higher, I should be but what you call a laughing-stock."

Many and many another of the old Monksfield garrison were missing, besides Lieutenant Digby. But Lieutenant Crashaw, and Captain Norris, and Captain Brooke, with his arm in a sling, and Nick Slanning, who limped with a newly healed wound, were all at Walsover.

Merrylips talked with them, but she was shy, almost as if they were new acquaintances. And they themselves seemed somehow shy of her. Once Slanning started to tousle her hair, as he had used to do, and craved her pardon for it. Captain Brooke and Captain Norris were too busy to speak with a little girl. And since she was no longer a little boy, she could not run about the courts and stables at their heels.

So she found herself passing many hours with her mother and her godmother and her sisters. She did not like Pug, for Pug said that Dick Fowell was a wicked rebel, and would not speak a word to him. But she liked tall, pretty Puss. For Puss was always asking questions about Dick, and often and often she spoke with him. Indeed, Dick seemed to spend more time with Puss than with Longkin, for whose sake it was that he said that he was staying to keep Christmas at Walsover.

It was Puss too that told Merrylips about Lady Sybil. After she left Larkland Lady Sybil had gone among great folk in foreign lands, and borrowed money for the king. It was difficult, delicate work, such as few might be trusted with. Then she had brought the money over seas with her, through dangers of storm and of pursuit by the enemy's ships that might have daunted the courage even of a man. And when she had done this task, she had gone to the king's headquarters at Oxford, and there, with her skill in nursing, she had tended the wounded soldiers, and thus had come by an illness that had been almost mortal.

Merrylips pondered all this. She had always seen Lady Sybil gracious and gentle and quiet. She had not guessed that she had courage and constancy equal to that of a soldier. She had not dreamed that women could have such courage.

But Merrylips was not always with the women, for Rupert and Flip were near enough of her age to make her a comrade. Flip would have been a little scornful, perhaps. He could not forgive Merrylips for having had such adventures, while he sat tamely at home and got his lessons.