assist him to dismount, as well as his old attendant, Martos, but, before they can reach him, he has sprung lightly from the saddle, and looks around.
“What! no one to receive me?” he says, with a light laugh, but a frown is on his face all the same. “Do the Regents hold me for a schoolboy, to be punished when I go abroad?”
“Such disrespect is not to be endured,” returns Garcia, of a much more impetuous temperament than the king, which betrays itself by the impatience with which he paces up and down, searching every corner, then sounding a horn he wears across his shoulders; but the long-drawn notes bring no response save innumerable echoes and a dense flight of birds from the old building, frightened from their nests.
“It makes my blood boil to see your Grace so treated,” cries Garcia, returning with heightened colour to the king’s side. “How dare the Regents——”
“Tush! tush! Garcia, I am sure it is accidental.”
“Impossible, my lord! I myself announced your intention of taking your midday meal here. You observe the flag is flying.”