At last young Fortescue spoke.
"I may be paying you a left-handed compliment, sir: but it seems to me that you are so likely, in that case, to become your own faithful friend and hearty servant (even if you have not borne off the bell already while we have been asleep), that the bargain is hardly fair between such a gay Italianist and us country swains.""You undervalue yourself and your country, my dear sir.But set your mind at rest.I know no more of that lady's mind than you do:
nor shall I know.For the sake of my own peace, I have made a vow neither to see her, nor to hear, if possible, tidings of her, till three full years are past.Dixi?"Mr.Coffin rose.
"Gentlemen, I may submit to be outdone by Mr.Leigh in eloquence, but not in generosity; if he leaves these parts for three years, Ido so also."
"And go in charity with all mankind," said Cary."Give us your hand, old fellow.If you are a Coffin, you were sawn out of no wishy-washy elm-board, but right heart-of-oak.I am going, too, as Amyas here can tell, to Ireland away, to cool my hot liver in a bog, like a Jack-hare in March.Come, give us thy neif, and let us part in peace.I was minded to have fought thee this day--""I should have been most happy, sir," said Coffin.
--"But now I am all love and charity to mankind.Can I have the pleasure of begging pardon of the world in general, and thee in particular? Does any one wish to pull my nose; send me an errand;make me lend him five pounds; ay, make me buy a horse of him, which will be as good as giving him ten? Come along! Join hands all round, and swear eternal friendship, as brothers of the sacred order of the--of what.Frank Leigh? Open thy mouth, Daniel, and christen us!""The Rose!" said Frank quietly, seeing that his new love-philtre was working well, and determined to strike while the iron was hot, and carry the matter too far to carry it back again.
"The Rose!" cried Cary, catching hold of Coffin's hand with his right, and Fortescue's with his left."Come, Mr.Coffin! Bend, sturdy oak! 'Woe to the stiffnecked and stout-hearted!' says Scripture."And somehow or other, whether it was Frank's chivalrous speech, or Cary's fun, or Amyas's good wine, or the nobleness which lies in every young lad's heart, if their elders will take the trouble to call it out, the whole party came in to terms one by one, shook hands all round, and vowed on the hilt of Amyas's sword to make fools of themselves no more, at least by jealousy: but to stand by each other and by their lady-love, and neither grudge nor grumble, let her dance with, flirt with, or marry with whom she would; and in order that the honor of their peerless dame, and the brotherhood which was named after her, might be spread through all lands, and equal that of Angelica or Isonde of Brittany, they would each go home, and ask their fathers' leave (easy enough to obtain in those brave times) to go abroad wheresoever there were "good wars," to emulate there the courage and the courtesy of Walter Manny and Gonzalo Fernandes, Bayard and Gaston de Foix.Why not? Sidney was the hero of Europe at five-and-twenty; and why not they?
And Frank watched and listened with one of his quiet smiles (his eyes, as some folks' do, smiled even when his lips were still), and only said: "Gentlemen, be sure that you will never repent this day.""Repent?" said Cary."I feel already as angelical as thou lookest, Saint Silvertongue.What was it that sneezed?--the cat?""The lion, rather, by the roar of it," said Amyas, making a dash at the arras behind him."Why, here is a doorway here! and--"And rushing under the arras, through an open door behind, he returned, dragging out by the head Mr.John Brimblecombe.
Who was Mr.John Brimblecombe?
If you have forgotten him, you have done pretty nearly what every one else in the room had done.But you recollect a certain fat lad, son of the schoolmaster, whom Sir Richard punished for tale-bearing three years before, by sending him, not to Coventry, but to Oxford.That was the man.He was now one-and-twenty, and a bachelor of Oxford, where he had learnt such things as were taught in those days, with more or less success; and he was now hanging about Bideford once more, intending to return after Christmas and read divinity, that he might become a parson, and a shepherd of souls in his native land.
Jack was in person exceedingly like a pig: but not like every pig: