84 MASTER SKYLARK

my very best. And, oh, Master Carew, I ha’ thought so
ill o’ thee! Forgive me, sir; I did na know thee well.”

Carew winced. Hastily throwing the rein to Nick, he
left him to master his own array.

As for Nick, as happy as a lark he learned his new
lines as he rode along, Master Carew saying them over to
him from the manuscript and over again until he made
not a single mistake; and was at great pains to teach him
the latest fashionable London way of pronouncing all the
words, and of emphasizing his set phrases. “Nay, nay,”
he would ery laughingly, “not that way, lad; but this:
‘Good my lord, I bring a letter from the duke’—as if
thou hadst indeed a letter, see, and not an empty fist.
And when thou dost hand it to him, do it thus—and not
as if thou wert about to stab him in the paunch with a
cheese-knife!” And at the end he clapped him upon the
back and said again and again that he loved him, that
he was a dear, sweet figure of a lad, and that his voice
among the rest of England’s singers, was like clear honey
dropping into a pot of grease.

But it is a long ride from Towcester to St. Albans town
in Herts, though the road runs through a pleasant, billowy
land of oak-walled lanes, wide pastures, and quiet parks ;
and the steady jog, jog of the little roan began to rack
Nick’s tired bones before the day was done.

Yet when they marched into the quaint old town to the
blare of trumpets and the crash of the kettledrums, all the
long line gaudy with the coat-armour of the Lord High
Admiral beneath their flaunting banners, and the horses