"Let's pretend," suggested Harold, "that we're Cavaliers and Roundheads; and YOU be a Roundhead!"
"O bother," I replied drowsily, "we pretended that yesterday; and it's not my turn to be a Roundhead, anyhow." The fact is, I was lazy, and the call to arms fell on indifferent ears. We three younger ones were stretched at length in the orchard. The sun was hot, the season merry June, and never (I thought) had there been such wealth and riot of buttercups throughout the lush grass. Green-and-gold was the dominant key that day. Instead of active "pretence" with its shouts and perspiration, how much better--I held--to lie at ease and pretend to one's self, in green and golden fancies, slipping the husk and passing, a careless lounger, through a sleepy imaginary world all gold and green! But the persistent Harold was not to be fobbed of.
"Well, then," he began afresh, "let's pretend we're Knights of the Round Table; and (with a rush) _I'll_ be Lancelot!"
"I won't play unless I'm Lancelot," I said. I didn't mean it really, but the game of Knights always began with this particular contest.
"O PLEASE," implored Harold. "You know when Edward's here I never get a chance of being Lancelot. I haven't been Lancelot for weeks!"
Then I yielded gracefully. "All right," I said. "I'll be Tristram."
"O, but you can't," cried Harold again.
"Charlotte has always been Tristram. She won't play unless she's allowed to be Tristram! Be somebody else this time."
Charlotte said nothing, but breathed hard, looking straight before her. The peerless hunter and harper was her special hero of romance, and rather than see the part in less appreciative hands, she would even have returned sadly to the stuffy schoolroom.
"I don't care," I said: "I'll be anything. I'll be Sir Kay.
Come on!"
Then once more in this country's story the mail-clad knights paced through the greenwood shaw, questing adventure, redressing wrong; and bandits, five to one, broke and fled discomfited to their caves. Once again were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in every corner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number of heads; while Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir Breuse Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters; and the firmament rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune of the day swung doubtful--now on this side, now on that; till at last Lancelot, grim and great, thrusting through the press, unhorsed Sir Tristram (an easy task), and bestrode her, threatening doom; while the Cornish knight, forgetting hard- won fame of old, cried piteously, "You're hurting me, I tell you! and you're tearing my frock!" Then it happed that Sir Kay, hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching sight suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet afar off; while the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with talk and laughter, was borne to our ears.
"What is it?" inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her curls; while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted nimbly to the hedge.
I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of "Soldiers!" I was off to the hedge, Charlotte picking herself up and scurrying after.
Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet flamed in the eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked delightfully; while the men, in a halo of dust, smoked their short clays like the heroes they were. In a swirl of intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by, while we shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jolly horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The moment they were past we were through the hedge and after them.
Soldiers were not the common stuff of everyday life. There had been nothing like this since the winter before last, when on a certain afternoon--bare of leaf and monochrome in its hue of sodden fallow and frost-nipt copse--suddenly the hounds had burst through the fence with their mellow cry, and all the paddock was for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof and dotted with glancing red. But this was better, since it could only mean that blows and bloodshed were in the air.
"Is there going to be a battle?" panted Harold, hardly able to keep up for excitement.
"Of course there is," I replied. "We're just in time. Come on!"
Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet-- The pigs and poultry, with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little concerning the peace that in these latter days lapped this sea- girt realm. In the schoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; and did not legends of the country-side inform us how Cavaliers had once galloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in the village? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their business was not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed hard on their tracks.
"Won't Edward be sorry," puffed Harold, "that he's begun that beastly Latin?"
