The Gold that Glitters | Page 3

who made a desperate stand in the street, keeping the victors at bay while their commander fled to a place of concealment.
The Cavaliers, as Charles's troops were called, had few virtues beyond their loyalty and courage. After their dispersion at Worcester, they spread over the country in small parties, begging, stealing, or committing open ravages. Many of the Parliamentary troops--not all-- were grave, sensible, God-fearing men, who were only concerned to do what they believed was right and righteous. Much fewer of the Cavaliers had any such aim, beyond their devotion to the monarchy, and their enthusiastic determination to uphold it. They were mostly gay, rollicking fellows, with little principle, and less steadfastness, who squandered their money on folly, if nothing worse; and then helped themselves to other people's goods without any uneasiness of conscience.
Colonel Lane was a Cavalier, and devoted to the King, and most of his tenants were Cavaliers also. A few were Roundheads--staunch adherents of the Parliament; and a few more had no very strong convictions on either side, and while they chiefly preferred the monarchy, would have been content with any settlement which allowed them to live honest and peaceable lives. Old Mrs Lavender belonged to this last class. If asked which side she was on, she would have said, "For the King"; but in her heart she had no enmity to either. Her son was a warmer politician; Jenny, being sixteen, was a much warmer still, and as Robin Featherstone, her hero, was a Cavalier, so of course was she.
We have given the worthy farmer and his family a good while to sit down to supper, which that night included a kettle of furmety, a mermaid pie, and a taffaty tart. What were they? A very reasonable question, especially as to the mermaid pie, since mermaids are rather scarce articles in the market. Well, a mermaid pie was made of pork and eels, and was terribly rich and indigestible; a taffaty tart was an apple-pie, seasoned with lemon-peel and fennel-seed; and the receipt for furmety--a very famous and favourite dish with our forefathers--I give as it stands in a curious little book, entitled, The Compleat Cook, printed in 1683.
"Take a quart of cream, a quarter of a pound of French barley, the whitest you can get, and boyl it very tender in three or four several waters, and let it be cold; then put both together. Put into it a blade of mace, a nutmeg cut in quarters, a race of ginger cut in four or five pieces, and so let it boyl a good while, still stirring, and season it with sugar to your taste; then take the yolks of four eggs, and beat them with a little cream, and stir them into it, and so let it boyl a little after the eggs are in: then have ready blanched and beaten twenty almonds (kept from oyling), with a little rosewater; then take a boulter strainer, and rub your almonds with a little of your furmety through the strainer, but set on the fire no more: and stir in a little salt, and a little sliced nutmeg, pickt out of the great pieces of it, and put it in a dish, and serve it."
The farmhouse family consisted only of Farmer Lavender, his mother, and his two daughters, Kate and Jenny. But fifteen people sat down to supper: for the whole household, including the farmer's men down to the little lad who scared the crows, all ate together in the big kitchen. Mrs Lavender sat at the head of the table, the farmer at the other end, with Jenny on his right hand: for there was in the father's heart a very warm place for his motherless Jenny.
"All ready to set forth, my lass?" he said gently--perhaps a little sadly. "Yes, Father, all ready."
"Art thou glad to go, child?"
"I'd like well to see the world, Father."
"Well, well! I mind the time when I'd ha' been pleased enough to have thy chance, my lass. Be a good girl, and forget not the good ways thy grandmother has learned thee, and then I cast no doubt thou'lt do well."
Jenny assented with apparent meekness, inwardly purposing to forget them as fast as she could. She ran into the garden when supper was over, to gather a nosegay, if possible, of the few flowers left at that time of year. She was just tucking a bit of southernwood into her bodice, when a voice on the other side of the hedge said softly,--
"Jenny."
"Well, what do you want, Tom Fenton?" responded Jenny, in a tone which was not calculated to make her visitor feel particularly welcome.
It was one of Jenny's standing grievances against Tom, that he would call her by her name. Robin Featherstone called her plain "Mrs Jenny," which