'You can imagine how angry Sir Huon and Lady Esclairmonde were with poor Robin! They said the Boy was never to be trusted with me night-walking any more--and he took about as much notice of their order as he did of the bee-stings. Night after night, as soon as it was dark, I'd pick up his whistle in the wet fern, and off we'd flit together among folk in housen till break of day--he asking questions, and I answering according to my knowledge. Then we fell into mischief again!' Puck shook till the gate rattled. 'We came across a man up at Brightling who was beating his wife with a bat in the garden. I was just going to toss the man over his own woodlump when the Boy jumped the hedge and ran at him. Of course the woman took her husband's part, and while the man beat him, the woman scratted his face. It wasn't till I danced among the cabbages like Brightling Beacon all ablaze that they gave up and ran indoors. The Boy's fine green-and-gold clothes were torn all to pieces, and he had been welted in twenty places with the man's bat, and scratted by the woman's nails to pieces. He looked like a Robertsbridge hopper on a Monday morning. '"Robin," said he, while I was trying to clean him down with a bunch of hay, "I don't quite understand folk in housen. I went to help that old woman, and she hit me, Robin!" '"What else did you expect?" I said. "That was the one time when you might have worked one of your charms, instead of running into three times your weight." '"I didn't think," he says. "But I caught the man one on the head that was as good as any charm. Did you see it work, Robin?" '"Mind your nose," I said. "Bleed it on a dockleaf--not your sleeve, for pity's sake." I knew what the Lady Esclairmonde would say. '_He_ didn't care. He was as happy as a gipsy with a stolen pony, and the front part of his gold coat, all blood and grass stains, looked like ancient sacrifices. 'Of course the People of the Hills laid the blame on me. The Boy could do nothing wrong, in their eyes. '"You are bringing him up to act and influence on folk in housen, when you're ready to let him go," I said. "Now he's begun to do it, why do you cry shame on me? That's no shame. It's his nature drawing him to his kind." '"But we don't want him to begin _that_ way," the Lady Esclairmonde said. "We intend a splendid fortune for him--not your flitter-by-night, hedge-jumping, gipsy-work." '"I don't blame you, Robin," says Sir Huon, "but I _do_ think you might look after the Boy more closely." '"I've kept him away from Cold Iron these sixteen years," I said. "You know as well as I do, the first time he touches Cold Iron he'll find his own fortune, in spite of everything you intend for him. You owe me something for that." 'Sir Huon, having been a man, was going to allow me the right of it, but the Lady Esclairmonde, being the Mother of all Mothers, over-persuaded him.