As with the warmly hospitable, few were the words.  Madge was promised by her mistress plenty of opportunities daily for seeing Kit Ines, and her mouth screwed to one of women’s dimples at a corner.  She went off in a cart to fetch boxes, thinking:  We are a hunted lot!  So she was not mildly disposed for the company of Mr. Kit on her return to the castle.

England’s champion light-weight thought it hard that his, coming down to protect the castle against the gibbering heathen Welsh should cause a clearing out, and solitariness for his portion.

’What’s the good of innocence if you ‘re always going to suspect a man!’ he put it, like a true son of the pirates turned traders.  ’I’ve got a paytron, and a man in my profession must have a paytron, or where is he?  Where’s his money for a trial of skill?  Say he saves and borrows and finds the lump to clap it down, and he’s knocked out o’ time.  There he is, bankrup’, and a devil of a licking into the bargain.  That ’s the cream of our profession, if a man has got no paytron.

No prize-ring can live without one.  The odds are too hard on us.  My lady ought to take into account I behaved respectful when I was obliged to do my lord’s orders and remove her from our haunts, which wasn’t to his taste.  Here I’m like a cannon for defending the house, needs be, and all inside flies off scarified.’

’It strikes me, Kit Ines, a man with a paytron is no better than a tool of a man,’ said Madge.

‘And don’t you go to be sneering at honest tools,’ Ines retorted.  ’When will women learn a bit of the world before they’re made hags of by old Father Wear-and-Tear!  A young woman in her prime, you Madge! be such a fool as not see I serve tool to stock our shop.’

’Your paytron bid you steal off with my lady’s child, Kit Ines, you’d do it to stock your shop.’

Ines puffed.  ’If you ain’t a girl to wallop the wind!  Fancy me at that game!  Is that why my lady—­but I can’t be suspected that far?  You make me break out at my pores.  My paytron’s a gentleman:  he wouldn’t ask and I couldn’t act such a part.  Dear Lord! it’d have to be stealing off, for my lady can use a stick; and put it to the choice between my lady and her child and any paytron living, paytron be damned, I’d say, rather’n go against my notions of honour.  Have you forgot all our old talk about the prize-ring, the nursery of honour in Old England?’

‘That was before you sold yourself to a paytron, Kit Ines.’

’Ah!  Women wants mast-heading off and on, for ’em to have a bit of a look-out over life as it is.  They go stewing over books of adventure and drop into frights about awful man.  Take me, now; you had a no small admiration for my manly valour once, and you trusted yourself to me, and did you ever repent it?—­owning you’re not the young woman to tempt to t’ other way.’

‘You wouldn’t have found me talking to you here if I had.’

‘And here I’m left to defend an empty castle, am I?’