Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/71

Rh across at Alleyne with an inflamed and angry countenance. 'Is a hairless infant to raise his tongue against me, when I have sung in every fair from Tweed to Trent, and have twice been named aloud by the High Court of the Minstrels at Beverley? I shall sing no more to-night.'

'Nay, but you will so,' said one of the labourers. 'Hi! Dame Eliza, bring a stoup of your best to Will to clear his throat. Go forward with thy song, and if our girl-faced clerk does not love it he can take to the road and go whence he came.'

'Nay, but not too fast,' broke in Hordle John. 'There are two words in this matter. It may be that my little comrade has been over quick in reproof, he having gone early into the cloisters and seen little of the rough ways and words of the world. Yet there is truth in what he says, for, as you know well, the song was not of the cleanest. I shall stand by him, therefore, and he shall neither be put out on the road, nor shall his ears be offended indoors.'

'Indeed, your high and mighty grace,' sneered one of the yeomen, 'have you in sooth so ordained?'

'By the Virgin!' said a second, 'I think that you may both chance to find yourselves upon the road before long.'

'And so belaboured as to be scarce able to crawl along it,' cried a third.

'Nay, I shall go! I shall go!' said Alleyne hurriedly, as Hordle John began to slowly roll up his sleeve, and bare an arm like a leg of mutton. 'I would not have you brawl about me.'

'Hush, lad!' he whispered, 'I count them not a fly. They may find they have more tow on their distaff than they know how to spin. Stand thou clear and give me space.'

Both the foresters and the labourers had risen from their bench, and Dame Eliza and the travelling doctor had flung themselves between the two parties with soft words and soothing gestures, when the door of the 'Pied Merlin' was flung violently open, and the attention of the company was drawn from their own quarrel to the new-comer who had burst so unceremoniously upon them.