“It shows how new your chivalry is, that you make so much of a mere scratch,” said Gaston, hastily commencing his preparations; “Guy, go you and saddle Brigliador.”

“No, do not touch Brigliador,” said Eustace.  “You deny it in vain, Gaston; your face betrays that you do not move without pain.  I learnt some leech-craft among my clerkly accomplishments, and you had better take care that you do not have the benefit.  Leonard, since it is the only way to quiet him, I order you to mount.”

Leonard hung his head, and obeyed.  They rode towards the village of Najara, where Eustace found the Prince entering the church, to hear morning mass.  Giving his horse to John Ingram, he followed among the other Knights who thronged the little building.

The service at an end, he received more than one kind greeting from his brother’s friends, and one of them, Sir Richard Ferrars, a fine old man, whose iron-gray locks contrasted with his ruddy complexion, led him forward to present him to the Prince of Wales.

“Welcome! our new-made Knight,” said Edward.  “Brave comrades, I present to you the youngest brother of our order, trusting you will not envy him for having borne off the fairest rose of our chaplet of Navaretta.”

Bertrand du Guesclin, who stood among the throng of nobles around the Prince, was the first to come forward and shake Eustace by the hand, saying with a laugh, “Nay, my Lord, this is the first time the ugliest Knight in France has been called by such a name.  However, young Sir, may you win and wear many another.”

“That scarcely may be a sincere wish, Messire Bertrand,” said the Duke of Lancaster, “unless you mean roses of love instead of roses of war.  And truly, with his face, and the fame he owes to you, methinks he will not find our damsels at Bordeaux very hard of heart.  See, he blushes, as if we had guessed his very thought.”

“Truly, my Lord John,” said old Sir John Chandos sternly, “a man may well blush to hear a son of King Edward talk as if such trifling were the reward of knighthood.  His face and his fame forsooth! as if he were not already in sufficient danger of being cockered up, like some other striplings on whom it has pleased his Highness to confer knighthood for as mere a chance as this.”

“You have coloured his cheek in good earnest,” said the Captal de Buch.  “Consider, Chandos, this is no time to damp his spirit.”

“It were a spirit scarce worth fostering, if it is to be damped by a little breath of the lips one way or the other,” said Sir John, moving off, and adding, when out of Eustace’s hearing, “A likely lad enough had he been under his brother’s training, but they will spoil him, and I will have no hand in it.”

Eustace had been accustomed to hold the warrior in such veneration, that he felt considerably hurt and mortified at the want of welcome which contrasted with the kindness of the rest; and he could hardly recover his self-possession sufficiently to inquire the pleasure of the Prince with regard to his brother’s troop.