"For shame on you all, Robert and George, and Roland, and Dick, and Walter" (Harry was not there, and she scornfully omitted Sir Launcelot); "you are all baiting Roger. And that is worse than baiting a dozen bulls. Don't let them, Father. He has done a braver thing this very day for us than baiting a hundred bulls. This very morning he faced that very bull in the priory meadow; not an hour ago. We were crossing it, Olive and I, and the bull ran at us, and Roger saw him and leapt over the hedge and fronted him, holding up my scarlet kerchief, which I had dropped, and then moved slowly backward, never turning till we were safe over the paling beyond the bull's reach." Sir Walter's eyes kindled as he turned and held out his hand to Roger. "Why did you not tell me of this, my boy?" he said. "I did not think it had anything to do with it," said Roger quietly. "I did not know any one thought I was a coward." Sir Launcelot took off his plumed hat and bowed low to Lettice. "Heaven send me such a fair defender, Mistress Lettice, when I am assailed." She looked up in his face with her large deep eyes, and said indignantly,-- "I am not Roger's defender. He was mine." He laughed, but not pleasantly. "Few would take much heed of such a danger for such a reward," he said. After this he professed to treat Roger with the profoundest deference. "A hero and a saint, a Don Quixote and one of the godly, all in one," he said, "and such a paragon at sixteen! What might not England expect from such a son?" He was, moreover, continually referring questions of conscience to Roger; asking him whether it was consistent with Christian compassion to play at tennis; he had heard of a tennis-ball once hitting a man in the eye, and who could say but that it might happen again? or whether he seriously thought it charitable to ride horses with sharp bits, since it was almost certain they did not like it! or whether certain equestrian feats were not positively profane, since they were brought to Europe by the Moors; or whether indeed there was not a text forbidding the riding of horses altogether. He did not venture on these taunts when Harry Davenant was present. But he generally contrived to make them with such a quaint and good-humoured air that the boys joined in the laugh, and Roger, having neither so nimble nor so practised a wit, could only flush with indignation, and then with vexation at himself that he could not control the quick rush of blood which always betrayed that he felt the sting.