"You are pleased to jest," he said, aloof and chilly. "Not so hasty, by your leave. You’ve a message for this girl who sups on moonbeams?" Some kindness in her voice arrested Kit. "Tell her that I wish her very well." "I shall tell her nothing of the kind, my lad. D’ye want to win her? Then I shall tell her you were thinking of the wars—that, when I asked if you had any message, you seemed to have forgotten her. I shall make much of that ugly scar across your face—taken yesterday, by the look of it—and hazard that you may live a week, with some good luck to help you." "You’ve no heart," he said, the Metcalf temper roused. "An older heart than yours—that is all. I have lived through your sort of moonlight, and found the big sun shining on the hill-top. My man went out to the wars, and I—I would not have him back just yet for all the gold in Christendom. Absence is teaching me so much." "I need her. You do not understand." "Tut-tut! You’ll have to wait till you’ve proved your needing." She looked at the Castle front, saw a star of light flicker and grow clear in a window on the left. "That is her room, Sir Love-too-well," she said, with the gentlest laugh. "When you are weary of guarding the Castle, glance up and picture her yonder, sipping dew, with all the fairies waiting on her." "I thank you," said Kit, with childish gravity. "I shall know where to look when all else in Ripley seems drab and tawdry." Lady Ingilby beckoned Squire Metcalf to her side. "Your son is no courtier, Mr. Metcalf," she said tartly. "He was not bred that way. I licked him into shape." "And yet he is a courtier. He loves well. Only, by your leave, defend my gate against all women from the Yoredale country. I’ve Joan Grant here, and her maid Pansy, and between them they’re turning our men’s wits. Two pretty women can always outflank a troop of horse." The Riding Metcalfs had a busy season between October of that year and the next year’s spring. So far as history-making went, the Civil War was quiet enough. Pym, with his sane strength, died as Christmas was nearing, and left the Parliament in a muddle of divided leadership. The King summoned a Parliament at Oxford, but nothing fruitful came of it. Yet in Yorkshire the Metcalfs found work enough to do. Loyal to their pledge, they always left some of their number to guard Ripley Castle; the rest of them went harrying Puritans wherever they could find them. Sometimes they made their way to Skipton, creating uproar and a diversion of the siege; at other times they paid minute and embarrassing attention to Otley, for, of all the Parliament’s officers, they detested most the Fairfaxes, who, as old Squire Mecca had it, should have learnt better manners from their breeding.