"Yes, but they must be! Did not the Queen say she would give us dresses? and do not these dresses look as if they had been given by a queen?"
"John, I shall feel very strange before all the grand ladies!"
"Then you need not, wife, for the Queen and Prince will be there; and the others will not trouble you; but this is a queer dress. It's like being somebody else."
And very queer they felt, as for the first time they walked down the grand stairs, in such, splendid dresses, to dine at the Queen's table, with the Queen's servants to wait on them.
"You must go first, John," said his wife, for shyness came over her.
"Be not so foolish, wife," whispered John; and, though feeling rather awkward in his new dress, he walked simply forward, as he might have done in a friend's house.
The Queen met them at the door, and, turning to her other guests, who were assembled, she said, "Gentlemen, I have to introduce to you, with great pleasure, the most loyal people in the town of Bristol."
At these words they all rose and bowed low, while John and his wife did the same, and then sat down, and ate a good dinner.
After the dinner was over, the Prince summoned John Duddlestone to the Queen.
At her command John knelt before her, and she laid a sword lightly on his shoulder, with the words, "Rise up, Sir John Duddlestone"; and the simple, kind-hearted bodice-maker of Bristol rose up a knight.