CHAPTER XX.

"A FRIEND IN NEED."

Lawrence Lee had meanwhile reached the town. Hardly, however, was he well into the High Street before he was forced to rein up, impeded at every step by the dense throng, crowding as far ahead as eye could reach. Epping Fair was a small thing by comparison with this motley medley of bawling wagoners, shrill-tongued farmers' wives haggling over their butter and eggs, screaming children, chattering apprentices banging about the shutters of their booths, barking sheep-dogs, chasing their terrified charges back into the ranks, braying donkies, clattering of pack-horses stumbling beneath their burdens over the cobble-stones, and all to the tune of the several church bells and clocks clanging out six. The unaccustomed senses of Lawrence Lee lost their balance for a moment, and he closed his eyes to assist their recovery, but opened them again in a twinkling at the sound of a voice demanding in not too honeyed accents where he was "shoving to?"

"It's you that's shoving," retorted Lee, looking down wrathfully at the speaker, whose uplifted elbow was raised insultingly near Stars and Garters' nose; and lifting his whip, but letting it fall again as he perceived what for the first moment he imagined to be an old man. A second glance, however, showed him that the shambling gait, pasty-coloured cheeks, puckered features, and lacklustre eyes helped to the composition of an individual of somewhere about his own number of years.

[Sidenote: Tit for tat.]

"I'll teach you and your jade to trample down gentlemen in the street," growled on this young old personage.

"Come, come!" laughed Lee good-humouredly, "I didn't mean to do anything of the sort. You're not hurt, are you?"

"No thanks to you if I'm not," sourly returned the other.

"Oh, come now. Did you get out of bed left leg foremost?" again laughed Lee.

"Right or left," ingenuously yawned the other, whom a game of basset had detained from between the blankets far into the small hours; "if they've been in bed at all, it's as much as they have."

Lawrence Lee's case was in degree a similar one; and his own weary sensations made him feel some sort of indulgence for this individual's sulky humour. "Oh, that accounts for it," he said to himself.

"Accounts for what?" fired back the other, catching the _sotto voce_ comment.

"For your being so polite--and--and--"

"Well," fumed the other, "people who have any manners never stop gawking in the middle of their remarks. It an't good breeding."

"Isn't it now? Well, for your looking so fresh and spruce then, I took you for a scarecrow."

"And I take you for a clodpole," glared back his new acquaintance with an affected laugh, "to whom 'twill be a real charity to give twopence a week to learn manners."

[Sidenote: Crooked answers.]

"That begins at home; keep it for your own necessities, my friend. You see I know how to be generous. But if you're really so amiably disposed towards me--"

"Go about your business."

"That I shall be able to do, when I have gone miles enough to find some one with a tongue in his head, civil enough to direct me to the king's palace."

The other opened his dull eyes in a preternaturally wide-awake manner, and bestowed a scrutinizing stare on Lawrence. "What may you want there?"

"Folks with an ounce of manners never meet question with question. It isn't good breeding--not in the part I come from."

"And where--"

"Where do I come from? That's a question whose answer will improve by keeping. So out of the way, friend, if you can't direct me."

"Can't!" hysterically giggled the other. "Ho! Come, I like that Ho, ho! Ha, ha! That's rich. Don't you know who I am, friend?"

"Haven't a notion," said Lawrence, looking away from him up and down the street, and anxiously surveying its snug but unpalatial-looking houses.

"How do you conceive, I wonder, how I come by these, my good fellow?" he went on, pointing downwards.

"Padded a bit, aren't they?" said Lawrence, driven to utter the passing comparison he had already unconsciously instituted in his own mind, between the remarkable symmetry and plumpness of the pair of silken-clad calves, and the meagre upper proportions of their proprietor.

[Sidenote: A grand personage.]

"Psha! Bah! These, I mean;" and then Lawrence perceiving that not the legs, but the pair of fine blue cloth breeches covering them, were the indicated objects, said, honestly enough, he doubted not, nay, he was sure they were, by many a long mile, the very finest small-clothes he had ever seen, and must have cost a pretty penny.

"Out of His Majesty's own purse," replied the other, waxing sweet-tempered as any cat rubbed under the chin, and elevating his insignificant nose, as he buttoned on the coat he had carried inside-out over his arm, and which Lawrence now perceived to be of the same cerulean hue and glittering embroideries as the nether garments. "Now," he went on, falling well back on to the heels of his resetted shoes, and strutting forward a few paces. "Now do you know who I am?"

"I haven't the ghost of a notion, I tell you," said Lawrence, watching the exhibition with absent impatient eyes, into which, however, a gleam of hopeful intelligence began to dawn; "but think I know what you are. One of the king's lackey fellows."

[Sidenote: The lackey.]

"Sirrah!"

"For sure!" and Lawrence slapped his knee, and his face grew full of animation. "How came I not to recognize the cut of you sooner, when I've seen any number of you hanging as thick as thieves scores of times--about the King's Arms, swilling down its cider--"

"To which King's Arms do you refer, my good fellow?" lisped the lackey. "There's hundreds of 'em scattered over the country."

"Opposite Master Rumbold's."

"Never heard of the fellow," said the lackey, airily stroking his little chin. "Hang me now if I have. Shouldn't be able to tell him from Adam, renounce me now if I should. Rumbold? Rumbold?"

"Of the Rye House."

"Never so much as heard of the place," said the lackey, and slowly shaking his head with the action and beatifically vacuous smile of a Chinese image.

"That shows how little you know the king, then, for he knows it well enough," contemptuously returned Lawrence, "as well as he does one of his palaces. 'Twas a palace too itself, once upon a time; and 'tis big enough for the squinniest eyes to see."

[Illustration: LAWRENCE ENCOUNTERS MR. FLIPPET]

"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" screeched the other. "Hear the clodhopper--all his geese are swans. I apprehend you'll be for telling me next that your Rye House is as fine an edifice as this;" and he languidly extended his hand in the direction of the house beneath whose walls they stood.

"This!" echoed Lawrence, laughing merrily. "This dog-hole of a place hold a candle to our old Rye House! Come," and briskly twitching Stars and Garters by the rein, he was about to push on, "how much farther to the king's palace?"

[Sidenote: Mr. Alworth.]

"Under this archway and across the yard," said a voice immediately behind him.

Lawrence's face fell blankly. If he had not quite anticipated walls of gold and columns of ivory, he had conceived of something statelier than this mean, patched-up-looking house. "I thank you, sir," he contrived, however, to say at last, turning to the speaker and lifting his cap deferentially, as he perceived him to be an elderly man, somewhat tall and still fairly robust, in an iron-gray periwig, and with a genial glance in his keen gray eyes, overshadowed by brows still thick and dark. The Mr. Alworth, in fact, whose acquaintance we have already made upon the heath.

"And if," continued Lawrence, "you will add to your obligation by telling me how I may come to speak with the king--"

"Ho!" chuckled the lackey; "renounce me if ever I heard the like of that!"

"I am no courtier," answered Mr. Alworth, suppressing the lackey's outbreak by a look; "but I am acquainted with many that are," he went on with a flicker of a smile; "and I often hear them say that His Majesty is not difficult of access, provided you have, of course, some letter of commendation."

"Not the ghost of one," said Lee with another blank stare.

"Ha! ha!" grinned the lackey in vast enjoyment of Lawrence's discomfiture. "A pretty fellow! What do you say to that, Mr. Alworth?"

"Silence, Mr. Flippet," said Alworth sternly. "You should have provided yourself, my friend," he went on, turning again to Lee. "You have doubtless influential neighbours--"

"Oh, yes!" said Lawrence, scratching his curls.

"Standing well at court?" continued Mr. Alworth.

"Well, I don't know so much about that. H'm, h'm--the fact is," stammered on Lawrence, "I--you see, I came off in--in just a bit of a hurry."

"And the more haste the less speed. You will know that, when those brown locks of yours have got a silver streak or two among them. Well, I don't know what's to be done," he added cogitatively.

[Sidenote: How to see the King.]

"Go back where he came from, like a bad penny," interjected the hugely delighted Flippet, but in a key too low to catch the ear of Alworth, of whom he stood in wholesome awe. That personage having, as he believed, and not without good cause, power to mar or to advance his fortunes by reason of his intimate acquaintance with many whose time was passed about the presence of the king. And Mr. Flippet was fond of his place, in spite of his complaints concerning its arduous and fatiguing duties. These consisted in the daily washing and combing of a couple of little dogs, respectively named Azor and Médor, two prime favourites among the posse of snubby-nosed, silky-coated, fringy-pawed, lilliputian spaniels which his majesty loved to have about him. As to the daily airing necessary for their health, the king himself was their nurse; and the toilets of the little creatures completed, Mr. Flippet was lord of his time, of which the portion not devoted to slumber, eating and drinking, and the basset-table, he spent in dawdling about.

"I fear there is nothing for it," said Mr. Alworth after a brief speculative silence, "but for you to return home, and obtain such a letter of introduction. 'Tis a case, I doubt, where, as the old saying has it, 'the longest way round is the shortest way there.':

"Go back!" cried Lee in dismay. "Thirty miles if 'tis a yard. Sir! sir! and 'tis a matter of life and death!"

"That's what they all say when they want to be fleecing the king or you; an't it, Master Alworth?" sneered the lackey.

[Sidenote: Flippet's duties.]

The remark was, however, lost on Alworth, who was absorbed in the study of Lawrence's countenance; but turning his eyes on Flippet at last, he said: "Mr. Flippet, you are a person of considerable influence with the gentlemen of the bed-chamber--according to your own account."

[Sidenote: Brought to book.]

"Oh, Mr. Alworth!" blushingly rejoined Flippet, "you're too kind to say so; renounce me if you're not."

"Denounce you, you mean sir!" sternly said Alworth. "And that, let me tell you, is what I had more than half a mind for, when I heard those two wretched little dogs yelping in the stable yonder to the tune of a switch, as I passed some two hours since."

"Oh, Mr. Alworth!" yelped Flippet in his turn, and falling on his knees, regardless of the puddles; "you'll never tell of me, Mr. Alworth. 'Twould be a hanging matter for me, if it came to his majesty's ears. Oh! Mr. Alworth, the lazy, pampered little beasts put me out of patience, and I--I--"

"If all the pampered animals were treated by their deservings, some would come worse off than Azor and Médor. Get up, you foolish fellow. You cowardly pretence of a man, chastising two poor helpless little dogs. Don't let me hear of it again."

"You shall not, Mr. Alworth," whined Flippet, inwardly resolved that next time he had occasion to "correct" his charges, it should be with closed windows and stuffed keyholes. "You shall not! Oh! don't tell of me this once," he went on in an agony of entreaty, "and I'll--I'll stand on my head to do you a service."

"You'll serve me better," smiled Alworth, "by keeping it where it is, and giving your brains a chance of devising some means of bringing this young man before the king, without an instant's delay."

"I--I--" gasped Flippet. "Oh! yes, to be sure; only, you see--"

"Yes or no," said Alworth inflexibly.

"Anything to oblige you--" began the unfortunate lackey.

[Sidenote: A friend not at court.]

"Very good," nodded Alworth. "'Tis but a small enough favour. But for my own part, I have never so much as seen his majesty face to face; and should have to be beholden to some of my friends for introduction to him myself, though we are near enough neighbours, and have had some business together. But my name, sir," he went on, turning again to Lee, "is but plain Richard Alworth. To be heard of across the way yonder, over against the parish church, at the sign of the 'Silver Leopard.'"

"And my name," said Lawrence, "is Lee--Lawrence Lee."

"Of the Nether Hall Farm, by Hoddesdon?" cried Alworth, a sudden light dispelling all the little clouds of mystification in the keen eyes transfixing Lawrence.

"The same," nodded Lee, as he dismounted from his horse; "at your service."

"The son of my good old friend and comrade!" and now tears glistened up into the eyes. "The loyalest heart that ever beat," he went on, seizing the hand of Lawrence. "We fought side by side on Worcester Field; and he was struck down. Heaven does so often take the best early back to itself. Well, well, he died worthily--as a man may be proud to die--for King and Country. You look your father's son," he went on, scanning the young man keenly; "every inch of you. But I must not detain you now; and Mr. Flippet here is, I can see, dying to acquit himself of his little obligation. So fare you well, Master Lee, till you favour me with your company at supper to-night. Nay, come, come; but I'll take no denial. Don't forget the 'Silver Leopard.' Anybody will direct you. I'm well known. Your servant, my lord," he went on, acknowledging the salutation of a gaily-dressed gallant, who thereupon linked his arm familiarly into that of Alworth, and led him away engaged in earnest conversation.

[Sidenote: The power of the purse.]

"Ay, there they go," muttered Flippet; "hand-in-glove, of course, like he is with 'em all. That's what it is to have your pockets well lined," continued Flippet, thrusting his hands into his own highly-decorated, but, thanks to the past night's little amusements, absolutely empty ones.

"A wealthy man?" said Lawrence.

"That's not the word for it," enviously replied Flippet. "No courtier? No. I'll warrant Richard Alworth, the goldsmith, wouldn't change his mouse-coloured broadcloth for all their fine feathers. But he's a good sort I don't say anything against him. Leastways he would be a good sort if he wasn't such a confounded, pig-headed, obstinate old--"

[Sidenote: Stopped in time.]

"Come, Mr. Flippet, when you're ready," interrupted Lee.