The Armourers Prentices | Page 3

thought that ye should part till you had some purpose in view. Nay, we should be fain for Ambrose to bide on here, so he would leave his portion for me to deal with, and teach little Will his primer and accidence. You are a quiet lad, Ambrose, and can rule your tongue better than Stephen."
"Thanks, brother John," said Ambrose, somewhat sarcastically, "but where Stephen goes I go."
"I would--I would have found Stephen a place among the prickers or rangers, if--" hesitated John. "In sooth, I would yet do it, if he would make it up with the housewife."
"My father looked higher for his son than a pricker's office," returned Ambrose.
"That do I wot," said John, "and therefore, 'tis for his own good that I would send him forth. His godfather, our uncle Birkenholt, he will assuredly provide for him, and set him forth--"
The door of the house was opened, and a shrewish voice cried, "Mr. Birkenholt--here, husband! You are wanted. Here's little Kate crying to have yonder smooth pouch to stroke, and I cannot reach it for her."
"Father set store by that otter-skin pouch, for poor Prince Arthur slew the otter," cried Stephen. "Surely, John, you'll not let the babes make a toy of that?"
John made a helpless gesture, and at a renewed call, went indoors.
"You are right, Ambrose," said Stephen, "this is no place for us. Why should we tarry any longer to see everything moiled and set at nought? I have couched in the forest before, and 'tis summer time."
"Nay," said Ambrose, "we must make up our fardels and have our money in our pouches before we can depart. We must tarry the night, and call John to his reckoning, and so might we set forth early enough in the morning to lie at Winchester that night and take counsel with our uncle Birkenholt."
"I would not stop short at Winchester," said Stephen. "London for me, where uncle Randall will find us preferment!"
"And what wilt do for Spring!"
"Take him with me, of course!" exclaimed Stephen. "What! would I leave him to be kicked and pinched by Will, and hanged belike by Mistress Maud?"
"I doubt me whether the poor old hound will brook the journey."
"Then I'll carry him!"
Ambrose looked at the big dog as if he thought it would be a serious undertaking, but he had known and loved Spring as his brother's property ever since his memory began, and he scarcely felt that they could be separable for weal or woe.
The verdurers of the New Forest were of gentle blood, and their office was well-nigh hereditary. The Birkenholts had held it for many generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to the eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the burial ground of Beaulieu Abbey. John Birkenholt, whose mother had been of knightly lineage, had resented his father's second marriage with the daughter of a yeoman on the verge of the Forest, suspected of a strain of gipsy blood, and had lived little at home, becoming a sort of agent at Southampton for business connected with the timber which was yearly cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and had only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of his stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in his sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though for the last few months Stephen had assisted his father in his forest duties.
Death had come suddenly to break up the household in the early spring of 1515, and John Birkenholt had returned as if to a patrimony, bringing his wife and children with him. The funeral ceremonies had been conducted at Beaulieu Abbey on the extensive scale of the sixteenth century, the requiem, the feast, and the dole, all taking place there, leaving the Forest lodge in its ordinary quiet.
It had always been understood that on their father's death the two younger sons must make their own way in the world; but he had hoped to live until they were a little older, when he might himself have started them in life, or expressed his wishes respecting them to their elder brother. As it was, however, there was no commendation of them, nothing but a strip of parchment, drawn up by one of the monks of Beaulieu, leaving each of them twenty crowns, with a few small jewels and properties left by their own mother, while everything else went to their brother.
There might have been some jealousy excited by the estimation in which Stephen's efficiency--boy as he was--was evidently held by the plain-spoken underlings of