all.

The news of her father's coming had traveled more slowly than he himself
did. The next day, while Eleanor and her mother were busy transplanting
some asphodel, the horn blew at the gate, and in a few minutes the knight
came striding across the turf and caught his wife in one arm and his
daughter in the other. Behind him was a great tall man with laughing eyes
and a rather sad mouth, and standing very straight and soldierly beside
the stranger was a boy some two years older than Eleanor, whom Sir Hugh
introduced as "my son, Roger."

The following days were so full of excitement that little time was left
for the tapestry chamber. The two knights were on their way southward to
meet King Henry and aid him to pacify some of his turbulent subjects.
Roger was to be left at the castle. It was usual for a knight to send his
sons to some friend for training during the years when a boy must learn
the duties of page and esquire. In this case there was more than usual
reason for it, for Sir Hugh's castle was in a remote part of England and
it would not be safe to leave his only son there during his absence.

Roger himself, while he frankly admitted that he did not much like leaving
England, was keenly interested in all that he saw and heard. Soon it
seemed as if he had always been at home in the old Norman castle. He
called Lady Ebba "grandame," as Eleanor had never dared to do, and though
she was as strict with him as she was with every one else, she never
seemed exactly displeased with him. Roger himself saw it.

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