He smiled as he glanced down at himself, at his loose shirt smeared and blackened with gunpowder, his bare arms and hands smirched with the same; and he compared himself with the gaily-attired officer who had alighted and entered the house, and not to his own advantage.
“Even his grooms cut a better figure,” muttered Gil.
His musings were cut short by a growl from Wat Kilby.
“How now, old bear!” he said, bitterly. “Is thy head sore?”
“It’ll be somebody else’s head sore directly,” growled the old fellow, who had just been a witness of the fact that one of Sir Mark’s followers had seen Janet’s bright face at the window, as she gazed admiringly at the showily-dressed new arrivals, and had kissed his hand to her—a compliment the pretty handmaiden was not slow to acknowledge.
“Now, Wat, you must not heed such things,” said Gil. “What is the girl to thee?”
“This much, skipper, that if he don’t mind—there: if he affronts me I’ll stuff him head first into the gun, as I be a sinful man.”
“Silence, old fool!” cried Gil, angrily. “The girl is nothing, and never will be, to thee. Get me my doublet and cap, for the new babe is baptised and the visitors may all go home.”
“Old fool, eh?” growled Wat. “Well, perhaps I be. Never mind; it’s pleasant to be an old fool if it be on account of a pretty woman.”
As he spoke he fetched his skipper’s doublet and cap from the place where they had hung, and was turning with them to Gil, who had stooped down by the edge of the Pool, to wash off some of the tightly-clinging powder, when one of Sir Mark’s followers walked up, and, rudely slapping Gil on the shoulder, cried, “Stop there, fellow; you have not done yet.”