“Father! they did but laugh when I told cousin Giles that he took to his heels, and he must needs call them beggars’ brats picked up on the heath.”
“Ha! ha! wench, thou art woman enough already to set them together by the ears,” said her father, laughing. “See here, Giles Headley, none who bears my name shall insult a stranger on my hearth.”
Stephen however had stepped forth holding out his small stock of coin, and saying, “Sir, receive for our charges, and let us go to the tavern we passed anon.”
“How now, boy! Said I not ye were my guests?”
“Yea, sir, and thanks; but we can give no cause for being called beggars nor beggars’ brats.”
“What beggary is there in being guests, my young gentlemen?” said the master of the house. “If any one were picked up on the heath, it was I. We owned you for gentlemen of blood and coat armour, and thy brother there can tell thee that, ye have no right to put an affront on me, your host, because a rude prentice from a country town hath not learnt to rule his tongue.”
Giles scowled, but the armourer spoke with an authority that imposed on all, and Stephen submitted, while Ambrose spoke a few words of thanks, after which the two brothers were conducted by an external stair and gallery to a guest-chamber, in which to prepare for supper.
The room was small, but luxuriously filled beyond all ideas of the young foresters, for it was hung with tapestry, representing the history of Joseph; the bed was curtained, there was a carved chest for clothes, a table and a ewer and basin of bright brass with the armourer’s mark upon it, a twist in which the letter H and the dragon’s tongue and tail were ingeniously blended. The City was far in advance of the country in all the arts of life, and only the more magnificent castles and abbeys, which the boys had never seen, possessed the amount of comforts to be found in the dwellings of the superior class of Londoners. Stephen was inclined to look with contempt upon the effeminacy of a churl merchant.
“No churl,” returned Ambrose, “if manners makyth man, as we saw at Winchester.”
“Then what do they make of that cowardly clown, his cousin?”