The old knight inspected Holyday for a moment with the curiosity due to genuine ware after one has been imposed upon by spurious; and then he dropped the youth from attention as a person of no consequence, and asked for Mistress Millicent.
"Troth," said Mistress Etheridge, "the baggage must needs be keeping her bed two hours or so; said she was not well. She has missed her lesson on the virginals. I know not what ails her of late. I'm sure 'twas not so with me when I was toward marriage,--but she sha'n't mope longer in her chamber. Lettice!" she called, going to the door, and gave orders to the woman.
Holyday breathed fast, and stared at the door. After a short while Millicent entered, with pouting lips, crimson cheeks, and angry eyes; she came forward in a reluctant way, and submitted to the tremulous embrace of the old knight. Not until she was free of his shaking arms did she take note of Master Holyday, and then she looked at him with the faintest sign of inquiry.
As for the scholar, a single glance had given him a sweeping sense of her beauty; daunted by it, he had dropped his eyes, and he dared not raise them from the tips of her neatly shod feet, which showed themselves beneath the curtain of her pink petticoat.
"'Tis my daughter, Master Holyday," said Mistress Etheridge, "and soon to be Sir Peregrine's lady." Holyday bowed vaguely at the pretty shoes, and cast a vacuous smile upon the old knight.
"What, another Master Holyday?" said Millicent, in an ironical manner suited to her perverse mood.
"The true one," replied her mother; "that rogue cozened him as he did us. Well, 'twas a lesson, Master Holyday, not to prate of your affairs to strangers."
"The rogue shall pay for giving me the lesson," ventured Holyday, bracing himself to play his part.
Mistress Millicent looked as if she doubted this.
"I know he is a much-vaunted swordman," added Holyday, catching her expression; "but I have some acquaintance with steel weapons myself."
His small, unnatural voice was at such variance with his words, that Millicent looked amused as well as doubting. He felt he was not getting on well, and was for sinking into despair; but the thought of Ravenshaw waiting behind the cross, hand on hilt, acted as a goad, and raised the wretched poet to a desperate alertness.