"Be pleased to fetch me the mustard," said I.
"You know what is convenient," he returned in a voice of keen approval, as he brought it. "Now, I was once a serving man in Berkeley Inn, called so of my lord Berkeley that lodgeth there. But whether he were at home or absent, I was ever there. And where I was, you understand, there must needs be necessaries bought, and such things as were, as I say, convenient."
He leered upon me very sly as he spoke these mysteries; by which I perceived I was already deep in his favour, as he was (like enough) deep in villainies.
"I marvel how from a lord's mansion you came to serve in a common tavern," said I, to check him.
"Oh, rest you easy, sir," he laughed, "for the difference is less than one might suppose. There be pickings and leavings there as in an hostelry, a nimble wit needed in both places indifferently, and for the rest, work to be scanted and lies to be told. Hey! and lives to be lived, master, and purses filled, and nought had, here nor there, but must be paid for or else stolen."
Such light-hearted roguery I owed it to my conscience to condemn, but for the life of me I could not, so that I fell into a great laughter that no shame might control. I hope it was weakness of my body, and not of virtue, pushed me to this length, but however come by, I could not help it, and think moreover it did me good.
"Come, that is the note I like," said my tapster, whose name I learnt was Jocelin; and, setting his lips close to my ear, he added, "London town is but a lump of fat dough, master, till you set the yeast of wit to work therein; but after, look you! there be fair risings, and a handsome great loaf to share." His eyes sparkled. "I have the wit, man, I am the yeast, and so..."
He had not finished his period, or if he did I marked him not, for just at that season the gate of a great house over the way opening, a party of horsemen rode forth into the street with a clatter of hoofs. They wheeled off at a smart pace to the right-hand, laughing and calling out to each other as they went, and sending the children a-skelter this way and that before them. Yet, notwithstanding they were gone by so speedily, I had yet espied the device upon their harness and cloaks, which was the green dragon and Pembroke cognizance. I flung back my chair.
"Is yon house Baynards Castle?" I cried.
"None other," he replied, nodding while he grinned. "I have certain good friends there, too."