The Gateway to Spenser. Tales Retold by Emily Underdown from The Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser (1913)

Una and the Red Cross Knight. 13
at a feast and begged for the next adventure,
some secret impulse had caused her to give
her promise.
The only condition she made
was that when the quest was accomplished,
Georgos should return to her court and serve
her for six years ; and Georgos, on his part,
was quite willing to comply with this, for
how could he be anything but eager to serve
so
great and beautiful a mistress as the Fairy
Queen ?
So now when Una told her tale of distress,
Georgos stepped forward and claimed the
fulfilment of her promise, and Gloriana
could not refuse it after having given her
word ; and in spite of the scorn of the
knights present and the queen's own doubts
of his fitness, the young man was appointed
Una's champion.
Now when he was clad as a knight in the
armour Una had brought for the purpose,
every one forgot to be scornful, so well did
this knightly garb become the young peasant.
Una herself, when she looked upon him and
noted how bravely he bore the silver shield
marked with a blood-red cross, and how