Yet he was a very pleasant lad to look upon, smooth-faced and gallant,
mounted and dressed in a manner that should give any lad joy. He wore
great gauntlets on his hands; he was in his habit of green; he had his
steel-buckled leather belt upon him beneath his cloak and a pair of
daggers in it, with his long-sword looped up; he had his felt hat on
his head, buckled again, and decked with half a pheasant's tail; he had
his long boots of undressed leather, that rose above his knees; and on
his left wrist sat his grim falcon Agnes, hooded and belled, not because
he rode after game, but from mere custom, and to give her the air.
He was meeting his first man's trouble.
Last year he had said good-bye to Derby Grammar School--of old my lord
Bishop Durdant's foundation--situated in St. Peter's churchyard. Here he
had done the right and usual things; he had learned his grammar; he had
fought; he had been chastised; he had robed the effigy of his pious
founder in a patched doublet with a saucepan on his head (but that had
been done before he had learned veneration)--and so had gone home again
to Matstead, proficient in Latin, English, history, writing, good
manners and chess, to live with his father, to hunt, to hear mass when a
priest was within reasonable distance, to indite painful letters now and
then on matters of the estate, and to learn how to bear himself
generally as should one of Master's rank--the son of a gentleman who
bore arms, and his father's father before him.
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