Eighth_.

Life was a rough, hearty thing in the early sixteenth century, strangely
divided between thought and folly, hardship and splendour, misery and
merriment, toil and sport.

The youths in the armourer's household had experienced little of this as
yet in their country life, but in London they could not but soon begin
to taste both sides of the matter. Master Headley himself was a good
deal taken up with city affairs, and left the details of his business to
Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones, though he might always appear on the
scene, and he had a wonderful knowledge of what was going on.

The breaking-in and training of the two new country lads was entirely
left to them and to Edmund Burgess. Giles soon found that complaints
were of no avail, and only made matters harder for him, and that Tibble
Steelman and Kit Smallbones had no notion of favouring their master's
cousin.

Poor fellow, he was very miserable in those first weeks. The actual
toil, to which he was an absolute novice, though nominally three years
an apprentice, made his hands raw, and his joints full of aches, while
his groans met with nothing but laughter; and he recognised with great
displeasure, that more was laid on him than on Stephen Birkenholt. This
was partly in consideration of Stephen's youth, partly of his ready zeal
and cheerfulness. His hands might be sore too, but he was rather proud
of it than otherwise, and his hero worship of Kit Smallbones made him
run on errands, tug at the bellows staff, or fetch whatever was called
for with a bright alacrity that won the foremen's hearts, and it was
noted that he who was really a gentleman, had none of the airs that
Giles Headley showed.

Giles began by some amount of bullying, by way of slaking his wrath at
the preference shown for one whom he continued to style a beggarly brat
picked up on the heath; but Stephen was good-humoured, and accustomed to
give and take, and they both found their level, as well in the Dragon
court as among the world outside, where the London prentices were a
strong and redoubtable body, with rude, not to say cruel, rites of
initiation among themselves, plenty of rivalries and enmities between
house and house, guild and guild, but a united, not to say ferocious,
_esprit de corps_ against every one else. Fisticuffs and wrestlings
were the amenities that passed between them, though always with a love
of fair play so long as no cowardice, or what was looked on a