He choked in his cup when he saw who stood laughing in the doorway, and there was a great screaming and scrambling among his audience. Knocking over her spinning-wheel to get to him, the woman Hildelitha threw her arms around her young lord’s neck and gave him a hearty smack on either cheek; while the fat monk sputtered blessings between his paroxysms of coughing, and the six blooming girls made a screaming circle around them.
Though he endured it amiably enough, the Etheling appeared in some haste to offer a diversion. He evaded a second embrace by turning and beckoning to his shrinking captive.
“Save a little of your greeting for my guest, good nurse. Behold the fire-eating Dane that I have captured with my own right arm!” As the red-cloaked figure still hung back, he pulled it gently forward until the light of the notched candles fell brightly on the face, pitifully white for all its blood-stains, in the frame of tumbled black tresses.
“A Dane?” the women cried shrilly; then, with equal unanimity, burst out laughing. Randalin drew a little nearer the Etheling’s sheltering side. He said half reprovingly, half freakishly, “It would not be well for you to anger him. He is the page of Canute himself, a real Wandering Wolf, and recks not whom he attacks. He came near to spitting Oslac at the battle, and even threatened me.”
“Oslac!” screamed one of the serving-maids, turning very red. “The murderous little fiend!”
“He deserves to have his neck wrung!” two more cried out.
And Father Ingulph cleared his throat loudly. “Well-fitting is your charity both toward my teachings and your heart, my son; and yet—Discretion is the mother of other virtues. To bring one of those roving children of Satan into a Christian household will lay upon me a responsibility which—which—” He paused to take a mouthful of wine and eye the stranger over the goblet rim with much disfavor.
While the maids whispered excitedly in one another’s ears, Hildelitha began to sniff behind her apron. “I do not see why you wanted to bring him home, Lord Sebert. You know that Danes are odious to me since my husband, of holy memory, fell under their axes—most detestable—Yet I would not anger you, my honey-sweet lord,” she broke off abruptly.
