Lubin appeared, bearing a funny, fat, black bottle, a black cup (both appeared to be of leather), and a kind of leaden plate on which was a small funnily-shaped loaf of bread.
“’Tis well you want none,” observed the tall gentleman, “I had asked you to help me crush a flask else,” and on the word the singer emerged from the tent.
“Jest not on solemn subjects, Seymour,” he said soberly, “Wine may carry me over one more pike-parade…. Good lad…. Here’s to thee…. Why should gentlemen drill?… I came to fight for the King, not to … But, isn’t this thy day for de Warrenne? Oh, ten million fiends! Plague and pest! And I cannot see thee stick him, Seymour …” and the speaker dashed the black drinking-vessel violently on the ground, having carefully emptied it.
The boy did not much like him.
His lace collar was enormous and his black velvet coat was embroidered all over with yellow silk designs, flowers, and patterns. It was like the silly mantel-borders and things that Mrs. Pont, the housekeeper, did in her leisure time. (“Cruel-work” she called it, and the boy quite agreed.)
This man’s face was pink and fair, his hair golden.
“Warn him not of the hilt-thrust, Seymour, lad,” he said suddenly. “Give it him first—for a sneering, bullying, taverning, chambering knave.”
The tall gentleman glanced at his down-flung cup, raised his eyebrows, and drank from the bottle.
“Such would annoy you, Hal, of course,” he murmured.
A man dressed in what appeared to be a striped football jersey under a leather waistcoat and steel breast-plate, high boots and a steel helmet led up a great horse.