hath matins
and evensong on board each day when the weather is not too foul, and
looks well that there be no ill-doings in his ship; and if he have a
berth for thy lad, it will be a better school for him than where
two-thirds of the household are raging against one another, and the
third ever striving to corrupt and outwit the rest. I am weary of it
all! Would that I could once get into blue water again, and leave it
all behind!"

"You will not! Oh! you will not!" implored Susan. "Remember, my dear,
good lord, how you said all your duties lay at home."

"I remember, my good housewife. Thou needst not fear for me. But
there is little time to spare. If I am to see mine old friend, I must
get speech of my Lord to-night, so as to be on horseback to-morrow.
Saddle me Brown Dumpling, boys."

And as the boys went off, persuading Cis, who went coyly protesting
that the paddock was damp, yet still following after them, he added,
"Yea, Sue, considering all, it is better those two were apart for a
year or so, till we see better what is this strange nestling that we
have reared. Ay, thou art like the mother sparrow that hath bred up a
cuckoo and doteth on it, yet it mateth not with her brood."

"It casteth them out," said Susan, "as thou art doing now, by your
leave, husband."

"Only for a flight, gentle mother," he answered, "only for a flight, to
prove meanwhile whether there be the making of a simple household bird,
or of a hawk that might tear her mate to pieces, in yonder nestling."

Susan was too dutiful a wife to say more, though her motherly heart was
wrung almost as much at the implied distrust of her adopted daughter as
by the sudden parting with her first-born to the dangers of the
northern seas. She could better enter into her husband's fears of the
temptations of page life at Sheffield, and being altogether a wife,
"bonner and boughsome," as her marriage vow held it, she applied
herself and Cis to the choosing of the shirts and the crimping of the
ruffs that were to appear in Hull, if, for there was this hope at the
bottom of her heart, my Lord might refuse leave of absence to his
"gentleman porter."

The hope was fallacious; Richard reported that my Lord was so much
relieved to find that he had detected no fresh conspiracy, as to be
willing to grant him a fortnight's leave, and even had said with a sigh
that he was in the right on't about his son, for Sheffield was more of
a school for plotting than