"_Si vis pacem_," Father Cuthbert said on such occasions, "_para arma._"
Wearied by their exertions, whether at home or abroad, the brothers
welcomed the evening social meal, and the rest which followed, when old
Saxon legend or the harp of the gleeman enlivened the household fire,
till compline sweetly closed the day.
Swiftly and pleasantly were passing the weeks succeeding the visit of
the prince, when a royal messenger appeared, bearing a letter sealed
with the king's signet. The old thane, who had passed his youth in more
troublous times, and could scarcely read the Anglo-Saxon version of the
Gospels, then extant, could not construe the monkish Latin in which it
was King Edred's good pleasure to write.
So the chaplain, Cuthbert, read him the letter in which the king greeted
his loyal and well-beloved subject, Ella of Aescendune, and begged of
him, as a great favour, that he would send his eldest boy to court, to
be the companion of the young prince, who had (the king said) conceived
a great affection for Elfric.
"I hear," added Edred, "that your boy is a boy after his father's heart,
full of love for the saints, diligent in his studies, and I trust well
qualified to amend by example the somewhat giddy ways of my nephew."
Ella felt that this latter commendation might be better bestowed upon
Alfred, who, although far less full of boyish spirit and energy than his
brother, was far more attached to his religious duties, as also far more
attentive to the wishes of his parents; but his love for Elfric blinded
him to more serious defects in the character of his son, or he might
have feared their development in a congenial soil.
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