“But a good many earldoms and lands,” said the Baron. “Hadst spoken of being out of pagedom, ’twere another thing.” “You are coming, sir,” cried Rob, willing to put by the subject. “You are coming to see how I can win honours.” “Aye, aye,” said his father. “When Nevil calls, then must Dacre come, though his old bones might well be at rest now. Salisbury and Warwick taking to flight like attainted traitors to please the foreign woman, saidst thou? Then it is the time men were in the saddle.” “Well I knew you would say so, and so I told my lord,” exclaimed Robert. “Thou didst, quotha? Without doubt the Duke was greatly reassured by thy testimony,” said his father drily, while the mother, full of pride and exultation in her goodly firstborn son, could not but exclaim, “Daunt him not, my lord; he has done well thus to be sent home in charge.” “_I_ daunt him?” returned Lord Whitburn, in his teasing mood. “By his own showing not a troop of Somerset’s best horsemen could do that!” Therewith more amicably, father and son fell to calculations of resources, which they kept up all through supper-time, and all the evening, till the names of Hobs, Wills, Dicks, and the like rang like a repeating echo in Grisell’s ears. All through those long days of summer the father and son were out incessantly, riding from one tenant or neighbour to another, trying to raise men-at-arms and means to equip them if raised. All the dues on the herring-boats and the two whalers, on which Grisell had reckoned for the winter needs, were pledged to Sunderland merchants for armour and weapons; the colts running wild on the moors were hastily caught, and reduced to a kind of order by rough breaking in. The women of the castle and others requisitioned from the village toiled under the superintendence of the lady and Grisell at preparing such provision and equipments as were portable, such as dried fish, salted meat, and barley cakes, as well as linen, and there was a good deal of tailoring of a rough sort at jerkins, buff coats, and sword belts, not by any means the gentle work of embroidering pennons or scarves notable in romance. “Besides,” scoffed Robert, “who would wear Grisly Grisell’s scarf!” “I would,” manfully shouted Bernard; “I would cram it down the throat of that recreant Copeland.” “Oh! hush, hush, Bernard,” exclaimed Grisell, who was toiling with aching fingers at the repairs of her father’s greasy old buff coat. “Such things are, as Robin well says, for noble demoiselles with fair faces and leisure times like the Lady Margaret. And oh, Robin, you have never told me of the Lady Margaret, my dear mate at Amesbury.” “What should I know of your Lady Margarets and such gear,” growled Robin, whose chivalry had not reached the point of caring for ladies. “The Lady Margaret Plantagenet, the young Lady Margaret of York,” Grisell explained.