"Order your pikes," Halfman commanded. "Advance your pikes. Shoulder your pikes." Then, as these orders were obeyed deftly enough by Thoroughgood and with bewildering variety by the others, he continued, "Trail your pikes," and then broke sharply off to expostulate with one of the farm-hands.
"Now, Timothy Garlinge, call you that trailing of a pike. Why, Gammer Satchell carries herself more soldierly."
Timothy Garlinge grinned loutishly at this rebuke, but the fat dame whom Halfman's flourish indicated seemed to dilate with satisfaction.
"It were shame," she chuckled, "if a handy lass could not better a lobbish lad."
"Ay," he commented; "but an old fool's best at her spits and griddles."
A most unmilitary titter rippled along the rank but broke upon the rock of Mrs. Satchell's anger. It might have seemed to many that it were impossible for the dame's cheeks to be any redder, but Mistress Satchell's visage showed that nature could still work miracles. With face a rich crimson from chin to forehead, she made to hurl herself upon the leering, fleering mannikin, but was caught in the unbreakable restraint of neighbor Clupp's clasp.
"You limb, I'll griddle you!" Mistress Satchell gasped, panting in the embracing arms. Halfman played the peace-maker with a sour smile.
"There, there, goody," he expostulated; "youth will have its yelp."
He turned with something of a yawn to Thoroughgood.
"Why a devil did you press gossip cook into the service?"
Thoroughgood shook his head protestingly.
"Nay, the virago volunteered," he explained, with a look that seemed to supplement speech in the suggestion that it were best to let Mistress Satchell have her own way. This was evidently Mistress Satchell's own view of the matter.
"Truly," she exclaimed, "if my lady, being no more than a woman, is man enough to garrison her house against the Roundheads, she cannot deny me, that am no less than a woman, the right to handle a pike."
Halfman, eying the dame's assertive rotundities, thought that he would be indeed a quarrelsome fellow who should deny her evident femininity.
"You are a lovely logician," he approved. "Enough."
Then resuming his sententious tone of military command, he took up the task where he had left it off.