Herbert was frail and sickly like his mother. He was two years older than Merrylips, but hardly a fraction of an inch the taller. His hair was whity yellow, and lank, while hers was ruddy brown and curly. His eyes were pale blue, while hers were, like her hair, a ruddy brown. He drooped his head and shoulders. She carried her chest and chin bravely uplifted and looked the world in the face.
Not only was Herbert sickly like his mother, but, as Merrylips soon found out, he was, like his mother, peevish and selfish. Besides, he was a coward. He would not even mount a horse, though his father, to shame him, set Merrylips on his own steady cob and let her trot up and down the courtyard. Worse still, once when his father caught him in a lie and struck him with a riding whip, Herbert whimpered aloud, so that Merrylips was ashamed for him.
But Herbert was not whipped a second time. His mother took his part, and said that he must not be beaten, for he was not strong. Then his mother and his father quarrelled,—so Merrylips heard it whispered among the serving-folk,—and Mistress Lowry took to her bed for a week, and Will Lowry went up to London in some temper.
After that Will Lowry came less often to Larkland. Perhaps it was because the Parliament in which he sat was very busy all that summer. Perhaps it was because he felt himself helpless to contend against his ailing wife. In any case, he stayed away from Larkland, and Merrylips, for one, missed him sorely.
Still, though Merrylips did not like Herbert, they were two children in a dull house full of grown folk, so they were much together. When Herbert felt good-natured, he could tell long stories that he had read in books, about the wars of Greece and Rome and the pagan gods and goddesses. Sometimes he sang, too, in a reedy little voice, and he could make sketches with his pencil such as neither Flip nor Munn nor even Longkin could ever hope to make. At such times as these Merrylips was glad of his company and openly admired his cleverness.
But out-of-doors, at boyish sports, Herbert was worse than useless. He could not climb and run and ride and play as Merrylips did, and he was jealous because she could. He mocked at all she did, and said that, if he chose, he could do it far better, because he was a boy, and she but a paltry girl. He would not let her touch his bat and balls, and once, when he found her peeping into one of his Latin books, he ran and told his mother that she was meddling with his things.
Very soon Herbert found a better way to tease Merrylips than by laughing at her or bearing tales to his mother. Whenever he quarrelled with her, and that was often, he delighted to taunt her with the fact that she was a Cavalier. All Cavaliers, he said, were false and cowardly, and the brave and virtuous Parliament men were beating them soundly.
Here Herbert took an unfair advantage. From his parents he knew all that was happening in England, from the Roundhead standpoint. But poor Merrylips was not allowed to read for herself the letters that were sent her from Walsover and get the Cavalier side of the story. So she had no arguments with which to answer him.
One day in October Herbert told her joyfully that the king's army had been driven back from Gloucester and soundly beaten at a place called Newbury.
Merrylips could answer only that she didn't believe it.