There was something in the voice, something in the figure, that brought to Merrylips the sight of Walsover, and the sound of voices that she had not heard in two long years. She scrambled to her feet, and with a loud cry flung her arms about the young man.
"'Tis thou! 'Tis thou!" she cried. "'Tis thou at last, and I did not know thee! Oh, Munn! mine own dear brother!"
CHAPTER XIII
IN BORROWED PLUMES
At first Merrylips could only laugh and cry and repeat her brother's name, while all the time she clung tight to him. It seemed too good to be true that Munn had really come at last! If once she let go of him, she feared that he would vanish, as the shapes of her dear ones had so many times vanished in her homesick dreams.
Little by little she grew sure that the figures on which she looked were real. The horses that drooped their heads to crop the brown grass were real. The big trooper, who held their bridles with one hand, was real, and in his face, which was all one broad grin, she recognized the features of that same Stephen Plasket, the serving-man who had gone with her when she went walking in London. From him she turned to Herbert Lowry, who stood scared and shaking, with his arm in Stephen's grasp, and she found him so real that she knew this was no dream.
Then she looked up again, at the sunburnt young face under the plumed hat, that bent above her. She was certain now that it was indeed Munn, in flesh and blood. So she kept back the tears of which he would not approve.
"And what's the news from Walsover?" she begged, as soon as she could speak. "Oh, tell me how it is with daddy and with my godmother!"
Very hastily Munn told her all that she wished to know. First he told how Lady Sybil had come safe to Walsover with her jewels, which had long since been spent in the king's service. After that Lady Sybil had gone a long journey into France, to beg some of the great folk in those parts, whom she had known in her girlhood, to send aid to the cause she served. For a time also she had been in the king's camp at Oxford, but now she had come back to Walsover.