Page 266 - the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood

different sizes and kinds, a dozen or more, with great, wide,
gaping mouths, like a brood of hungry daws. His coat was
gathered in at his waist, and was patched with as many col-
ors as there are stripes upon a Maypole in the springtide.
On his head he wore a great tall leathern cap, and across his
knees rested a stout quarterstaff of blackthorn, full as long
and heavy as Robin’s. As jolly a beggar was he as ever trod
the lanes and byways of Nottinghamshire, for his eyes were
as gray as slate, and snapped and twinkled and danced with
merriment, and his black hair curled close all over his head
in little rings of kinkiness.
‘Halloa, good fellow,’ quoth Robin, when he had come
nigh to the other, ‘what art thou doing here this merry day,
when the flowers are peeping and the buds are swelling?’
Then the other winked one eye and straightway trolled
forth in a merry voice:

‘I sit upon the stile,
And I sing a little while
As I wait for my own true dear, O,
For the sun is shining bright,
And the leaves are dancing light,
And the little fowl sings she is near, O.

‘And so it is with me, bully boy, saving that my doxy co-
meth not.’
‘Now that is a right sweet song,’ quoth Robin, ‘and, were
I in the right mind to listen to thee, I could bear well to hear
more; but I have two things of seriousness to ask of thee; so