“Why do you like boys better than girls?” he asked her point blank, one day.

“Men can fight,” Lady Ebba answered, curtly.

“Of course,” Roger reflected.  “But women can make men fight.  Father told me that once when the Danes tried to take your father’s castle you held them off until he came back.”

Lady Ebba did not say anything.  She rose and stalked away, but although her back was to Roger, Eleanor could see that she was actually smiling.

Eleanor knew that story.  It gave her a feeling of enormous admiration and awe when she thought of it, but love—­for a grandmother who had commanded a garrison, on scanty rations, besieged by fierce and bloodthirsty pirates—­seemed a little out of place.

It was certainly far pleasanter, having Roger for a playmate.  Eleanor thought it was better than having a sister.  He taught her to run, to fish, to play bowls, nine-men-morris, and draughts.  The dismal stone hall was not half so grim with Roger in her corner.

These diversions did not, however, interrupt the daily lessons, the task in spinning, or the newly-begun tapestry.  To her great satisfaction Eleanor found that Roger liked the tapestry chamber nearly or quite as well as she did.  When he saw Eleanor’s tapestry he persuaded Sir Hugh l’Estrange to spend a rainy morning in making sketches for it.

“Father has been to Egypt and the other places,” he explained, “and knows just how they look.  You never saw a dragon, though, father?” he added doubtfully.

“Not exactly, but I have seen a beast rather like one,” laughed the knight, and he drew a very fair picture of a crocodile, adding wings and a fiery breath and fearsome talons by way of establishing its dragonship.  “I have seen the place where they say the monster was killed.  And did you know that Saint George is said to have helped the Allies under Godfrey in the First Crusade, at the battle for Jerusalem?” While the children looked on in fascinated wonder, he sketched in a battle-scene—­rather cramped for space because of the narrow linen web—­showing Godfrey de Bouillon cheering on his knights, the saint on his great white horse leading the charge, and the banner of the Cross rising above the host.  From the tapestried walls Sainte Genevieve and her people looked on with kindly interest at the little group.

When the two fathers had gone away life settled into a quiet but pleasant order.  Roger shared some of Eleanor’s lessons, and when she was at her spinning or needlework he was often by, with a bow to shape, a spear to polish or some other in-door work to do, while they listened to Lady Philippa’s stories.  To him nearly all of them were new.

As the spring advanced the three spent much time in the garden.  A drain was needed in one place, and Roger retrieved a spade from the gardener’s quarters and went at it.  He had heard Lady Philippa say that she should like to have a “mount” there—­an artificial hill made of packed earth and stones—­and as he dug he threw the dirt inward and tramped it down.  He explained that this was the way a castle mount was made if the hill selected was not high enough.  The one at Lewes that William de Warenne had made was a hundred and fifty feet high.