“And thy mouth too, I’ll be sworn, Dickon Greenleaf,” chuckled Mat Bowyer, of Kendal. “Trust thee for knowing where good cheer is to be had, whether to eat or to drink!”
“I were in luck, truly, were my mouth ever as full of good cheer as thine of foolish chatter, Mat Bowyer,” retorted Nottingham Dick; and this sledge-hammer wit drew a general laugh from the audience, to whose capacity it was just suited.
“Long live our bold King Ned!” shouted Woodstall, “and may he ever have some good war in hand!”
A score of deep voices hoarsely echoed this humane toast.
“Amen!” said Mat Bowyer; “he is the king for a bold fellow to thrive under.”
“Ay, marry is he!” cried Dickon Greenleaf, heartily. “There is but one thing about him that likes me not; methinks a king of England should speak good plain English in place of yon mincing French, which is fitter for a magpie’s mouth than a man’s.”
“What? what?” broke in several voices at once. “Rule thy tongue better, Dickon, lest it breed thee pain. Know’st thou not that it is treason to say aught against the king’s grace?”
“I care not,” said the bold archer, sturdily; “I bear an English tongue, that dares speak the truth before King Edward himself—God bless him!—and it is no treason, I trow, to wish that his grace had the luck to be able to speak his mind in honest English, like ourselves.”
“And were I to say, ‘Hang me up yon malapert knave for speaking ill of his betters,’ would that be English enow for thee?” asked a deep voice behind.
Dickon turned with a start, and saw (or thought he saw) through a loop-hole just over his head, a face, the sight of which seemed to turn him to stone, and all his comrades likewise.