Alric stopped suddenly. He had reached that age when the tendency to boast begins, at least in manly boys, to be checked by increasing good sense and good taste. Yet it is no disparagement of Alric’s character to say that he found it uncommonly difficult to refrain, when occasion served, from making reference to his first warlike exploit, even although frequent rebukes and increasing wisdom told him that boasting was only fit for the lips of cowards.
“Why do ye stop?” asked Glumm, who quite understood the boy’s feelings, and admired his exercise of self-control.
“Be—because I have said enough.”
“Good is it,” observed the other, “when man or boy knows that he has said enough, and has the power to stop when he knows it. But come, Alric, thou hast not said enough to me yet on the matter that—that—”
“What matter?” asked Alric, with a sly look.
“Why, the matter of my welfare, to be sure.”
“Ah, true. Well, methinks, Glumm, that I could give thee a little medicine for thy mind, but I won’t, unless ye promise to keep thy spear off my back.”
“I promise,” said Glumm, whose curiosity was aroused.
“It is a sad thing when a man looks sweet and a maid looks sour, but there is a worse thing; that is when the maid feels sour. Thou lovest Ada—”
“Hold!” cried Glumm, turning fiercely on his companion, “and let not thy pert tongue dare to speak of such things, else will I show thee that there are other things besides spears to lay across thy shoulders.”