When Charles the First was King by J.S. Fletcher

You may be quite sure that we threw wide open our hearts and doors and welcomed our travellers with no little rejoicing. For though they had not been away from us for such a great length of time, having only been absent during the autumn and winter, yet it appeared a considerable season, and we were heartily glad to see their faces again. And so they were quickly in the great kitchen and everybody was shaking hands with them and the women were all talking together, so that you could not hear yourself speak for noise. Nay, so busied were they with asking questions and giving their own news as to what had happened during the travellers' absence, that it was all Philip and Jack could do to get a word in or to swallow a mouthful of the food and drink which my mother and Lucy hastened to set on the table. But after awhile, when the first tumult of rejoicing was over and we were all sat round the hearth in the firelight, I was able to get a good look at my two old friends and notice how their adventures had fared with them. And I quickly perceived that even those few months of campaigning had changed Jack Drumbleforth in appearance, if in nothing else. For he was now bronzed and tanned like one who has been out much in all weathers, and he had grown a great beard and moustache, so that his face was much changed. But the same old eyes of honest gray looked out from above the same somewhat snubbed nose, and the eye twinkled when he said a sly thing just as in the old days. I could not think what Parson Drumbleforth would say to his son's altered appearance, for Jack looked less like a learned clerk than ever. He had gotten himself a slight sword-cut on his right cheek, and this, while giving him a military air, also added something of distinction to him, according to the girls. Yea, indeed, in his scarlet coat and sash and great buff boots, with the sword at his side and his hair and beard trimmed in the Stuart fashion, Jack looked a very different fellow to the old Jack that used to make fun for us in the old days.

I suppose that nobody was more content that night than my mother, who, having a great horror of war and bloodshed, was only too well pleased to see our warriors home again with their heads and limbs still preserved to them. But she had been better pleased if Philip Lisle could have given her more satisfactory news about the war, which she wished to see terminate there and then, so dreadful a thing did it seem to her that Englishmen should fight with Englishmen. So she quickly began to make inquiry of Philip Lisle of the war and its prospects.