“Nay, but keep your distance, most gallant sir,” answered the blue-eyed maiden, “for, unless I greatly mistake, these reverend ladies will soon interrupt our amicable conference, if the acquaintance they recommend shall seem to proceed beyond a certain point—so, fair sir, be pleased to abide by your station, and reply to my questions.—By what achievements did you prove the qualities of a page, which you had thus happily acquired?”
Roland, who began to enter into the tone and spirit of the damsel's conversation, replied to her with becoming spirit.
“In no feat, fair gentlewoman, was I found inexpert, wherein there was mischief implied. I shot swans, hunted cats, frightened serving-women, chased the deer, and robbed the orchard. I say nothing of tormenting the chaplain in various ways, for that was my duty as a good Catholic.”
“Now, as I am a gentlewoman,” said Catherine, “I think these heretics have done Catholic penance in entertaining so all-accomplished a serving-man! And what, fair sir, might have been the unhappy event which deprived them of an inmate altogether so estimable?”
“Truly, fair gentlewoman,” answered the youth, “your real proverb says that the longest lane will have a turning, and mine was more—it was, in fine, a turning off.”
“Good!” said the merry young maiden, “it is an apt play on the word—and what occasion was taken for so important a catastrophe?—Nay, start not for my learning, I do know the schools—in plain phrase, why were you sent from service?”
The page shrugged his shoulders while he replied,—“A short tale is soon told—and a short horse soon curried. I made the falconer's boy taste of my switch—the falconer threatened to make me brook his cudgel—he is a kindly clown as well as a stout, and I would rather have been cudgelled by him than any man in Christendom to choose—but I knew not his qualities at that time—so I threatened to make him brook the stab, and my Lady made me brook the 'Begone;' so adieu to the page's office and the fair Castle of Avenel—I had not travelled far before I met my venerable parent—And so tell your tale, fair gentlewoman, for mine is done.”
“A happy grandmother,” said the maiden, “who had the luck to find the stray page just when his mistress had slipped his leash, and a most lucky page that has jumped at once from a page to an old lady's gentleman-usher!”
“All this is nothing of your history,” answered Roland Graeme, began to be much interested in the congenial vivacity of this facetious young gentlewoman,—“tale for tale is fellow-traveller's justice.”
“Wait till we are fellow-travellers, then,” replied Catherine.