Nature had mingled the good humour with which she had endowed the damsel with no small portion of shrewdness. Even Hob himself began to tire of hearing his daughter's praises, and broke in with, 'Aye, aye, she is a clever quean enough; and, were she five years older, she shall lay a loaded sack on an aver[1] with e'er a lass in the halidome. But I have been looking for your two sons, dame. Men say downby that Halbert 's turned a wild springaid, and that we may have word of him from Westmoreland one moonlight night or another.'
'God forbid, my good neighbour—God, in his mercy, forbid!' said Dame Glendinning, earnestly; for it was touching the very key-note of her apprehensions, to hint any probability that Halbert might become one of the marauders so common in the age and country. But, fearful of having betrayed too much alarm on this subject, she immediately added, 'That though, since the last rout at Pinkie Cleuch, she had been all of a tremble when a gun or a spear was named, or when men spoke of fighting; yet, thanks to God and our Lady, her sons were like to live and die honest and peaceful tenants to the abbey, as their father might have done but for that awful hosting which he went forth to with mony a brave man that never returned.'
'Ye need not tell me of it, dame,' said the miller, 'since I was there myself, and made two pair of legs (and these were not mine, but my mare's) worth one pair of hands. I judged how it would be, when I saw our host break ranks with rushing on through that broken ploughed field, and so as they had made a pricker of me, I e'en pricked off with myself while the play was good.'
'Aye, aye, neighbour,' said the dame, 'ye were ay a wise and a wary man; if my Simon had had your wit, he might have been here to speak about it this day; but he was ay cracking of his good blood and his high kindred, and less would not serve him than to bide the bang to the last, with the earls, and knights, and squires that had no wives to greet for them, or else had wives that cared not how soon they were widows; but that is not for the like of us. But touching my son Halbert, there is no fear
- ↑ Aver—properly a horse of labour.
