The boy for the first time hung his head. The other lad, who had been listening impatiently, broke in in French.
“Set Wolf at them in another sort of fashion. I see them still skulking about, and peeping at us from behind the trees—the unmannerly loons! They need to be taught a lesson.”
“Gently, Edgar,” said the friar, laying his hand on his young companion’s arm, “Wolf might prove a somewhat dangerous chastiser. Come, boy, let us have their names,” he added, turning to the other.
“Holy friar,” said the boy eagerly, “I know the French.”
The friar lifted his eyebrows.
“I thought thy tongue had a strange trick about it, but I could have sworn it was Flemish that it resembled.”
“We have just come from Flanders.”
“Not English,” cried Edgar angrily. “If I had known he was one of those blood-sucking foreigners, who fasten like leeches upon our poor country, Wolf should never have bestirred himself to the rescue.”
“Peace,” said the friar more sharply, but before he could say more the younger boy broke in indignantly—
“We are English, good English! My father has but been in Flanders perfecting himself in his trade of wood-carving.”