The Armourers Prentices | Page 5

on the next heath?"
"I would have thee do a brother's honest part, John Birkenholt. A loving part I say not. Thou wert always like a very popple for hardness, and smoothness, ay, and slipperiness. Heigh ho! But what is right by the lads, thou shalt do."
John cowered under her eye as he had done at six years old, and faltered, "I only seek to do them right, nurse."
Nurse Joan uttered an emphatic grunt, but Mistress Maud broke in, "They are not to hang about here in idleness, eating my poor child's substance, and teaching him ill manners."
"We would not stay here if you paid us for it," returned Stephen.
"And whither would you go?" asked John.
"To Winchester first, to seek counsel with our uncle Birkenholt. Then to London, where uncle Randall will help us to our fortunes."
"Gipsy Hal! He is more like to help you to a halter," sneered John, sotto voce, and Joan herself observed, "Their uncle at Winchester will show them better than to run after that there go-by-chance."
However, as no one wished to keep the youths, and they were equally determined to go, an accommodation was come to at last. John was induced to give them three crowns apiece and to yield them up the five small trinkets specified, though not without some murmurs from his wife. It was no doubt safer to leave the rest of the money in his hands than to carry it with them, and he undertook that it should be forthcoming, if needed for any fit purpose, such as the purchase of an office, an apprentice's fee, or an outfit as a squire. It was a vague promise that cost him nothing just then, and thus could be readily made, and John's great desire was to get them away so that he could aver that they had gone by their own free will, without any hardship, for he had seen enough at his father's obsequies to show him that the love and sympathy of all the scanty dwellers in the Forest was with them.
Nurse Joan had fought their battles, but with the sore heart of one who was parting with her darlings never to see them again. She bade them doff their suits of mourning that she might make up their fardels, as they would travel in their Lincoln-green suits. To take these she repaired to the little rough shed-like chamber where the two brothers lay for the last time on their pallet bed, awake, and watching for her, with Spring at their feet. The poor old woman stood over them, as over the motherless nurslings whom she had tended, and she should probably never see more, but she was a woman of shrewd sense, and perceived that "with the new madam in the hall" it was better that they should be gone before worse ensued.
She advised leaving their valuables sealed up in the hands of my Lord Abbot, but they were averse to this--for they said their uncle Randall, who had not seen them since they were little children, would not know them without some pledge.
She shook her head. "The less you deal with Hal Randall the better," she said. "Come now, lads, be advised and go no farther than Winchester, where Master Ambrose may get all the book-learning he is ever craving for, and you, Master Stevie, may prentice yourself to some good trade."
"Prentice!" cried Stephen, scornfully.
"Ay, ay. As good blood as thine has been prenticed," returned Joan. "Better so than be a cut-throat sword-and-buckler fellow, ever slaying some one else or getting thyself slain--a terror to all peaceful folk. But thine uncle will see to that--a steady-minded lad always was he--was Master Dick."
Consoling herself with this hope, the old woman rolled up their new suits with some linen into two neat knapsacks; sighing over the thought that unaccustomed fingers would deal with the shirts she had spun, bleached, and sewn. But she had confidence in "Master Dick," and concluded that to send his nephews to him at Winchester gave a far better chance of their being cared for, than letting them be flouted into ill-doing by their grudging brother and his wife.
CHAPTER TWO.
THE GRANGE OF SILKSTEDE.
"All Itchen's valley lay, Saint Catherine's breezy side and the woodlands far away, The huge Cathedral sleeping in venerable gloom, The modest College tower, and the bedesmen's Norman home."
Lord Selborne.
Very early in the morning, even according to the habits of the time, were Stephen and Ambrose Birkenholt astir. They were full of ardour to enter on the new and unknown world beyond the Forest, and much as they loved it, any change that kept them still to their altered life would have been distasteful.
Nurse Joan, asking no questions, folded up their fardels on their backs, and packed the wallets for their day's journey with ample