It is your counsel that I am acting upon, and you have told me you are sure that it is best that he should go.

It is not as if he were taking service with a southern lord.

He will be but a day's ride away from us, and doubtless will be able to come over, at times, and stay a day or two with us; and once a year, when times are peaceable, you shall ride behind me, on a pillion, to see how things go with him at the Percys' castle.

At any rate it will be better, by far, than if he had carried out that silly fancy of his, for putting himself in the hands of the monks and learning to read and write; which would, perchance, have ended in his shaving his crown and taking to a cowl, and there would have been an end of the Forsters of Yardhope.
"Now, put that cold joint upon the table, again.

Doubtless the lad has a wolf's appetite." There was no time lost.