"You have no right so to speak of Rupert!" cried Merrylips, hotly.
"And have I not?" Mawkin took her up. "Look you now, my lady her kind self hath just been unto the ox-house to minister to that vile boy, and he and the man are both gone hence—stolen away like thieves under cover of night. Now what do you say unto that, Mistress Merrylips?"
CHAPTER VII
IN THE MIDST OF ALARUMS
Indeed, what could poor Merrylips say? Even she must admit that Rupert had deceived her.
At the very moment when he promised to wait for her, he had been stealing away from Larkland, like the spy that Goody Trot and Roger and Mawkin called him. No doubt he had Claus with him all the time, crouched in the bushes underneath the wall. No doubt he had let her fetch the crossbow only to get rid of her, that she might not see their flight. From first to last he had deceived her, and she had so trusted him!
It troubled Merrylips, too, in the hours that followed Rupert's flight, to feel that her godmother was troubled.
At first Lady Sybil seemed to make light of the matter. She said that no doubt the man Claus, in his stupidity, had been frightened by her questions and so had run away and taken the boy with him. She was sorry for the lad, who was so ill and so unfit to travel, and she sent out into the countryside to find him. But she could get no news of the runaways. No one seemed to have seen or heard of them. And then Lady Sybil became grave and anxious indeed.
Little by little Merrylips stopped pitying Rupert, who might be lying sick under some hedge. Instead she began to wonder what harm might, through Rupert, come upon her dear godmother. She thought about this so much that she made her head ache. Indeed her head seemed strangely apt to ache in those days!
At last, one twilight, when Rupert had been gone four days from Larkland, Merrylips cast herself down on the cushion at her godmother's feet, and begged her to say just what was the evil that all the household seemed to fear.