“Nay, little enough, sir, unless when he sends such rainy days that we cannot fly a hawk—but I say to your worshipful knighthood, that as I am, a true man——”
“As you are a false varlet, had been the better obtestation.”
“Nay, if your knighthood allows me not to speak,” said Adam, “I can hold my tongue—but the boy came not hither by my bidding, for all that.”
“But to gratify his own malapert pleasure, I warrant me,” said Sir Halbert Glendinning—“Come hither, young springald, and tell me whether you have your mistress's license to be so far absent from the castle, or to dishonour my livery by mingling in such a May-game?”
“Sir Halbert Glendinning,” answered Roland Graeme with steadiness, “I have obtained the permission, or rather the commands, of your lady, to dispose of my time hereafter according to my own pleasure. I have been a most unwilling spectator of this May-game, since it is your pleasure so to call it; and I only wear your livery until I can obtain clothes which bear no such badge of servitude.”
“How am I to understand this, young man?” said Sir Halbert Glendinning; “speak plainly, for I am no reader of riddles.—That my lady favoured thee, I know. What hast thou done to disoblige her, and occasion thy dismissal?”
“Nothing to speak of,” said Adam Woodcock, answering for the boy—“a foolish quarrel with me, which was more foolishly told over again to my honoured lady, cost the poor boy his place. For my part, I will say freely, that I was wrong from beginning to end, except about the washing of the eyas's meat. There I stand to it that I was right.”
With that, the good-natured falconer repeated to his master the whole history of the squabble which had brought Roland Graeme into disgrace with his mistress, but in a manner so favourable for the page, that Sir Halbert could not but suspect his generous motive.
“Thou art a good-natured fellow,” he said, “Adam Woodcock.”
“As ever had falcon upon fist,” said Adam; “and, for that matter, so is Master Roland; but, being half a gentleman by his office, his blood is soon up, and so is mine.”