"Then I pray you interpret both boldly and briefly," interposed M. Legros impatiently. "What is your friend's business? Out with it, quick, before I have you both kicked out of this door."
The clerk did not think it necessary to translate the tailor's last words into English.
"The business concerns my lord the Earl of Stowmaries and Rivaulx," he began.
"Then 'tis none of mine," retorted the tailor coldly.
"Ay, but of a truth it is, good Master," rejoined the other more boldly, "and my friend here, Master Daniel Pye, by name, a worthy and independent Englishman, hath journeyed all the way from London to speak with you on this business. The noble Earl of Stowmaries hath greatly wronged you, sir, and your family. You have suffered great humiliation at his hands. Your daughter through his neglect is neither wife nor maid—"
"And you, sirrah, will be neither alive nor dead, but near to both estates, an you do not hold your tongue," said M. Legros bringing an angry fist crashing down on the arm of his chair. "Out of my house this instant!—How dare you speak my daughter's name without my leave, you dirty paper-scraper, you bundle of quill feathers, you—"
Good M. Legros was choking with wrath but he did fully intend to put his threat into execution and to kick these two impertinent rascals out of his house. Ere he could recover himself, however, the clerk forcibly egged on by Daniel Pye had interposed quietly but firmly:
"Nevertheless, sir, it is my duty to be the mouthpiece of my friend who hath come all this way to tell you that God himself hath taken up your cause against the great and noble Earl of Stowmaries, whose pride will soon be laid in the dust, who will become an abject, cringing creature, dependent mayhap on your bounty for subsistence, dispossessed, disinherited, nay worse, tried for treason, and hanged, sir, hanged as a traitor! Is not that a glorious revenge, sir, for the wrongs which he has done to you?"
"Nay, and by the Mass, sirrah," said M. Legros who had recovered sufficiently from his blind wrath to be justly indignant at this mealy-mouthed harangue, "if you do, value your shoulders and if your friend cares for his skin, you can have thirty seconds wherein to reach that door, after which the toe of my boot and the stout stick in yonder corner shall accelerate your footsteps."
"Sir," protested the clerk, prompted thereto by Daniel Pye, "my friend here desires to remind you that he was driven away by blows from your doors in this like manner just five months ago. Had you given him more ready access to your august person, the letter which he bore and which was written by my hand at a kind lady's bidding, would have been delivered into your hands one hour the earlier, and thus would have averted a misery which you yourself would now give your life's blood to undo."