"Rupert," she faltered, as she halted beside him. "I—I am right sorry."
"Get thee away!" he answered between his teeth. "I'm a gentleman's son, I, as well as thou. I'll not buffoon for thee—not for all Miles Digby can do!"
He looked up at her, and tried to speak stoutly, but his face was quivering.
"Get thee hence!" he cried again, and turned away his head. "I'll not be made a gazing-stock, I tell thee! Get thee away, Tibbott Venner, thou little milksop! Truth, I do hate the very sight of thee!"
So Merrylips clambered sadly down the rampart in the twilight, and after that put herself no more in Rupert's way. But she thought of him often, and whenever she thought of him, she was sorry for him, and sorry for herself, as if she had lost a friend.
CHAPTER XVIII
TO ARMS!
For two weeks and more Merrylips had lived at Monksfield. In a hole in her mattress she had hidden the silver ring that had been Lady Sybil's. As long as she had been a girl, she had worn the ring about her neck, but she felt that it did not become a boy to wear it so.
She had changed her girlish little smock for one of Munn's loose shirts. Over her ruddy brown doublet she wore a sleeveless jerkin of leather, which had been made for her from an old coat of Munn's. In her sash she carried a pistol with a broken lock that Nick Slanning had given her.
And she had learned to cock her hat like Lieutenant Crashaw, and stride like Captain Norris, and say, "Body a' truth!" loud and fierce, like Lieutenant Digby. In short, she felt that she now was truly a boy, such as all her life she had hoped to be. And she was willing to stay and be a boy, there at Monksfield, forever and ever.