Hugo Egremont’s handsome florid face turned a sickly green. He got off his horse, advanced toward Roger with outstretched hand, and said the speech he had been rehearsing for three years past.
“Welcome, brother. I see you are in bad case; but trust me, you shall never want while I have a shilling.”
For answer, Roger’s wide mouth came open in a wider grin, and he did what he had not done since the day he was sent to prison with his chains clanking about his legs,—he laughed loudly and merrily. Dull and stupid as the rustics were around him, some magnetic thrill was instantly communicated to them, and they at the same moment burst into hoarse haw-haws.
Hugo Egremont’s face grew greener. He was a man of great intelligence, and he knew the tremendous power of ridicule. He would have mounted his horse and ridden boldly through a stick-flinging and stone-throwing mob, but this grinning crew disconcerted him. He spoke again, however, covering his chagrin with much art.
“Your own imprudence, brother, has brought you to this pass,” he said with an inimitable air of brotherly reproof. “The violent and unprovoked attack you made upon the King at your own table was bound to do you a mischief. As a younger brother, I was helpless to prevent, but I was alarmed for you.”
Roger said not one word, but laughed again. He could not but admire the ineffable impudence of his half-brother.
Finding it difficult to carry on a one-sided conversation, Hugo turned, and his eye fell on the ploughman who held the horse by the bridle. The beast’s equipment for the road was certainly ridiculous, and Hugo Egremont found in it an excuse to laugh himself, as everybody around him was laughing.
“For whose journey,” he asked, “is that miserable hack intended?”
“For Master Roger’s, sir,” civilly replied the man. Hugo Egremont, still by a great effort, kept a scornful smile on his face; and then every other face grew grave, and the ploughman added,—
“If your honor smiles, sir, at the notion that such a horse is good enough for Master Roger, we all do smile with you. But if you smile because he has no better—well, sir, ’tis because there is no better one in this village.”