“Ay!” and there pushed in, past the lad a tall, lean form, with a gay but soiled short cloak over one shoulder, a suit of worn buff, a cap garnished with a dilapidated black and yellow feather, and a pair of gilt spurs. “If this be as they told me, where Armourer Headley’s folk lodge—I have here a sort of a cousin. Yea, yonder’s the brave lad who had no qualms at the flash of a good Toledo in a knight’s fist. How now, my nevvy! Is not my daughter’s nevvy—mine?”
“Save your knighthood!” said Smallbones. “Who would have looked to see you here, Sir John? Methought you were in the Emperor’s service!”
“A stout man-at-arms is of all services,” returned Fulford. “I’m here with half Flanders to see this mighty show, and pick up a few more lusty Badgers at this encounter of old comrades. Is old Headley here?”
“Nay, he is safe at home, where I would I were,” sighed Kit.
“And you are my young master his nephew, who knew where to purvey me of good steel,” added Fulford, shaking Giles’s hand. “You are fain, doubtless, you youngsters, to be forth without the old man. Ha! and you’ve no lack of merry company.”
Harry Randall’s first impulse had been to look to the right and left for the means of avoiding this encounter, but there was no escape; and he was moreover in most fantastic motley, arrayed in one of the many suits provided for the occasion. It was in imitation of a parrot, brilliant grass-green velvet, touched here and there with scarlet, yellow, or blue. He had been only half disguised on the occasion of Fulford’s visit to his wife, and he perceived the start of recognition in the eyes of the Condottiere, so that he knew it would be vain to try to conceal his identity.
“You sought Stephen Birkenholt,” he said. “And you’ve lit on something nearer, if so be you’ll acknowledge the paraquito that your Perronel hath mated with.”
The Condottiere burst into a roar of laughter so violent that he had to lean against the mud wall, and hold his sides. “Ha, ha! that I should be father-in-law to a fool!” and then he set off again. “That the sober, dainty little wench should have wedded a fool! Ha! ha! ha!”
“Sir,” cried Stephen hotly, “I would have you to know that mine uncle here, Master Harry Randall, is a yeoman of good birth, and that he undertook his present part to support your own father and child! Methinks you are the last who should jeer at and insult him!”
“Stephen is right,” said Giles. “This is my kinsman’s tent, and no man shall say a word against Master Harry Randall therein.”