"What are you two brawling about?" she asked, as she moved slowly towards the marble seat. Tiffany thrust in the first word. "Goody Satchell will vex me with praise of the Parliament man." By this time Brilliana had seated herself, observing her vehement shes with amusement. She turned a face of assumed gravity upon the elder. "So, so, Mistress Satchell, have you turned Roundhead all of a sudden?" Mrs. Satchell shook her head at Brilliana and her fist at Tiffany. "Tiffany is a minx, but I am an honest woman; and as I am an honest woman, there are honest qualities in this honest Puritan." Brilliana knew as much herself and fretted at the knowledge. It cut against the grain of her heart to admit that a rebel could have any redemption by gifts. But she still questioned Mistress Satchell smoothly, thinking the while of a man intrenched behind a table, one man against six. "What are these marvels?" she asked. Mistress Satchell was voluble of collected encomiums. "Why, Thomas Coachman swears he is a master of horse-manage, and he has taught Luke Gardener a new method of grafting roses, and Simon Warrener swears he knows as much of hawking as any man in Oxford or Warwick." She paused, out of breath. Brilliana, leaning forward with an air of infinite gravity, commented: "It were more to your point, surely, if the gentleman had skill in cook-craft." Mistress Satchell was not to be outdone; she clapped her hands together noisily and shrilled her triumph. "There, too, he meets you. After breakfast this morning, when I asked him how he fared, he overpraised my table, and he gave me a recipe for grilling capons in the Spanish manner--well, you shall know, if you do but live long enough." The ruddy dame nodded significantly as she closed thus cryptically her tables of praises. Brilliana uplifted her hands in a pretty air of wonder. "The phoenix," she sighed, "the paragon, the nonpareil of the buttery." Instantly her smiling face grew grave. "Well, it is not for us to praise him or blame him while he is on our hands. See that you give him good meals, Mistress Satchell." Dame Satchell stared at her mistress in some amazement. "Will he not dine in hall, my lady?" Brilliana frowned now in good earnest. "Lordamercy! do you think I would sit at meat with a rebel? Have I not set him a room apart, to spare myself the sight of him? Serve him in his own rooms, but look you serve him well." Dame Satchell wagged her head with an air of the deepest significance. "I warrant you," she muttered, "he commended my soused cucumbers." And so nodding and chuckling she moved like a great galleon over the green, and soon was out of sight. The moment her broad back was well turned, Tiffany permitted herself to utter the protests which had been boiling within her. "To listen to Dame Satchell, one would think that no man had ever seen a horse or known one dish from another before this."