I had been head of the school,
not because of any special cleverness, but because I would burst rather
than be second to anybody in anything. I had fought and fought, at all
hazards, until not a boy in school or town dare come near me. So now,
since my Lord Brocton--and many a lord beside, I doubted not--had failed,
I must needs step in and say, "I will please her, whether she like it or
not." And so, plain countryman as I was, I had done my work ungrudgingly
but not, I feared, too modestly, and since I could not speak court-like, I
had been over-masterful, and given her mood for mood, and turned no cheek
for her sweet smiting. And as I had of old time licked every lad in
Stafford, so now neither Staffordshire nor all the King's men in it should
turn me back. Through she should go, and in safety and comfort, so that
when the time came for me to hand over my precious charge to a worthier,
she should say that the yokel had done a man's work and done it
gentlemanly. Therefore, when Mistress Waynflete looked up to me from the
bleak uplands with serious, questioning eyes, I said, as calmly as if we
were pacing the garden at the Hanyards, with Kate and Jane active in the
kitchen behind us, "Ham and eggs for breakfast!"
"I don't see any," she said, in answering mood, scanning the fields
around us.
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