Master
Headley and Tibble both confessed that they could produce nothing equal
to it in workmanship, though Kit looked with contempt at the slight
weapon of deep blue steel, with lines meandering on it like a watered
silk, and the upper part inlaid with gold wire in exquisite arabesque
patterns. He called it a mere toy, and muttered something about
sorcery, and men who had been in foreign parts not thinking honest
weight of English steel good enough for them.

Master Headley would not trust one of the boys with the good silver
coins that had been paid as the price of the sword--French crowns and
Milanese ducats, with a few Venetian gold bezants--but he bade them go
as guards to Tibble, for it was always a perilous thing to carry a sum
of money through the London streets. Tibble was not an unwilling
messenger. He knew Master Michael to be somewhat of his own way of
thinking, and he was a naturally large-minded man who could appreciate
skill higher than his own without jealousy. Indeed, he and his master
held a private consultation on the mode of establishing a connection
with Michael and profiting by his ability.

To have lodged him at the Dragon court and made him part of the
establishment might have seemed the most obvious way, but the dogged
English hatred and contempt of foreigners would have rendered this
impossible, even if Abenali himself would have consented to give up his
comparative seclusion and live in a crowd and turmoil.

But he was thankful to receive and execute orders from Master Headley,
since so certain a connection would secure Aldonza from privation such
as the child had sometimes had to endure in the winter; when, though the
abstemious Eastern nature needed little food, there was great suffering
from cold and lack of fuel. And Tibble moreover asked questions and
begged for instructions in some of the secrets of the art. It was an
effort to such a prime artificer as Steelman to ask instruction from any
man, especially a foreigner, but Tibble had a nature of no common order,
and set perfection far above class prejudice; and moreover, he felt
Abenali to be one of those men who had their inner eyes devotedly fixed
on the truth, though little knowing where the quest would lead them.

On his side Abenali underwent a struggle. "Woe is me!" he said.
"Wottest thou, my son, that the secrets of the sword of light and
swiftness are the heritage that Abdallah Ben Ali brought from Damascus
in the hund