“Come, Stephen, Stephen; ’tis time to play the man! What are we to do out in the world if you weep and wail?”
“She might have let us stay for the month’s mind,” was heard from Stephen.
“Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer thoughts along with us. Better be done with it at once, say I.”
“There would still be the Forest! And I saw the moorhen sitting yester eve! And the wild ducklings are out on the pool, and the woods are full of song. Oh! Ambrose! I never knew how hard it is to part—”
“Nay, now, Steve, where be all your plots for bravery? You always meant to seek your fortune—not bide here like an acorn for ever.”
“I never thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor father’s burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, and a base narrow-souled—”
“Hist! hist!” said the more prudent Ambrose.
“Let him hear who will! He cannot do worse for us than he has done! All the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to turn his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold in his grave,” cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in his passionate sense of wrong.
“That’s womanish,” said Ambrose.
“Who’ll be the woman when the time comes for drawing cold steel?” cried Stephen, sitting up.