But it was not his habit to cherish such melancholy affections.
"This is a plaintive ditty, my nut brown maid," said he, chucking the retreating glee maiden under the chin, and detaining her by the collar of her dress, which was not difficult, as he sat on horseback so close to the steps on which she stood.

"But I warrant me you have livelier notes at will, ma bella tenebrosa; ay, and canst sing in bower as well as wold, and by night as well as day." "I am no nightingale, my lord," said Louise, endeavouring to escape a species of gallantry which ill suited the place and circumstances--a discrepancy to which he who addressed it to her seemed contemptuously indifferent.
"What hast thou there, darling ?" he added, removing his hold from her collar to the scrip which she carried.
Glad was Louise to escape his grasp, by slipping the knot of the riband, and leaving the little bag in the Prince's hand, as, retiring back beyond his reach, she answered, "Nuts, my lord, of the last season." The Prince pulled out a handful of nuts accordingly.

"Nuts, child! they will break thine ivory teeth, hurt thy pretty voice," said Rothsay, cracking one with his teeth, like a village schoolboy.
"They are not the walnuts of my own sunny clime, my lord," said Louise; "but they hang low, and are within the reach of the poor." "You shall have something to afford you better fare, poor wandering ape," said the Duke, in a tone in which feeling predominated more than in the affected and contemptuous gallantry of his first address to the glee maiden.
At this moment, as he turned to ask an attendant for his purse, the Prince encountered the stern and piercing look of a tall black man, seated on a powerful iron grey horse, who had entered the court with attendants while the Duke of Rothsay was engaged with Louise, and now remained stupefied and almost turned to stone by his surprise and anger at this unseemly spectacle.

Even one who had never seen Archibald Earl of Douglas, called the Grim, must have known him by his swart complexion, his gigantic frame, his buff coat of bull's hide, and his air of courage, firmness, and sagacity, mixed with indomitable pride.
The loss of an eye in battle, though not perceptible at first sight, as the ball of the injured organ remained similar to the other, gave yet a stern, immovable glare to the whole aspect.
The meeting of the royal son in law with his terrible stepfather [father in law] was in circumstances which arrested the attention of all present; and the bystanders waited the issue with silence and suppressed breath, lest they should lose any part of what was to ensue.
When the Duke of Rothsay saw the expression which occupied the stern features of Douglas, and remarked that the Earl did not make the least motion towards respectful, or even civil, salutation, he seemed determined to show him how little respect he was disposed to pay to his displeased looks.

He took his purse from his chamberlain.
"Here, pretty one," he said, "I give thee one gold piece for the song thou hast sung me, another for the nuts I have stolen from thee, and a third for the kiss thou art about to give me.