“Ay, sir, tidy; but, my word, it was fine for a gentleman in those days to mount his horse, shining in the sun, and looking as noble as a man could look. He’s a bit spotty, though, it’s been so damp. But I’ll begin with Sir Murray and go right down ’em all, doing the steeliest ones first, and getting by degrees to the last on ’em as is only steel half-way down, and the rest being boots. Ah! it’s a dolesome change from Sir Murray to Sir Brian yonder at the end, and worse still, to your father, as wouldn’t put nothing on but a breast-piece and back-piece and a steel cap.”
“Why, it’s best,” said the boy; “steel armour isn’t wanted so much now they’ve got cannon and guns.”
“Ay, that’s a sad come-down too, sir. Why, even when I was out under your grandfather, things were better and fighting fairer. People tried to see who was best man then with their swords. Now men goes to hide behind hedges and haystacks, to try and shoot you like they would a hare.”
“Why, they did the same sort of thing with their bows and arrows, Ben, and their cross-bows and bolts.”
“Well, maybe, sir; but that was a clean kind o’ fighting, and none of your sulphur and brimstone, and charcoal and smoke.”
“I say, Ben, it’ll take you some time to get things straight. Mean to polish up the old swords and spears, too?”
“Every man jack of ’em, sir. I mean to have this armoury so as your father, when he comes back from scattering all that rabble, will look round and give me a bit of encouragement.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the boy; “so that’s what makes you so industrious.”
“Nay it aren’t, sir,” said the man, with a reproachful shake of his head. “I didn’t mean money, Master Roy, but good words, and a sort o’ disposition to make the towers what they should be again. He’s a fine soldier is your father, and I hear as the king puts a lot o’ trust in him; but it always seems to me as he thinks more about farming when he’s down here than he does about keeping up the old place as a good cavalier should.”
“Don’t you talk a lot of nonsense,” said Roy, hotly; “if my father likes to live here as country gentlemen do, and enjoy sport and gardening and farming, who has a better right to, I should like to know?”