"
"I think, Mother, that you are looking better than when I saw you
last."
"I am well, dear," she said. "We have had a quiet year, and no cause
for anxiety, and things have gone well with us; and it has been
pleasant, indeed, for us to have received such good news of your
doings, and to know that you stood so well with Hotspur."
Oswald now ran up the steps to greet his father, who was already
talking with Alwyn, who had slipped off his horse and run to speak to
his brother, while Oswald was occupied with his mother.
"Well, lad," John Forster said, laying his hand upon his shoulder, and
looking him up and down, "you have grown well nigh into manhood. I
always said that you would over top me, and though methinks that I have
still three inches of advantage, you have yet time to grow up to look
down on me.
"Well, you have done credit to us, boy, and your monkish reading and
writing has not harmed you, as I was afraid it would. Alwyn tells me
that no man of Percy's troop did better than you, in that fight with
the Welsh; save, mayhap, that big man-at-arms down there, who, he tells
me, cracked the skulls of four Welshmen who were trying to stab you,
besides those he disposed of on his own account.
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