“Humph! There's some sense in that,” quoth Amyas. “I'd run a mile for a woman when I would not walk a yard for a man; and—Who is this our mother is bringing in? The handsomest fellow I ever saw in my life!”
Amyas was not far wrong; for Mrs. Leigh's companion was none other than Mr. Secretary, Amyas's Smerwick Fort acquaintance; alias Colin Clout, alias Immerito, alias Edmund Spenser. Some half-jesting conversation had seemingly been passing between the poet and the saint; for as they came in she said with a smile (which was somewhat of a forced one)—“Well, my dear sons, you are sure of immortality, at least on earth; for Mr. Spenser has been vowing to me to give your adventure a whole canto to itself in his 'Faerie Queene'.”
“And you no less, madam,” said Spenser. “What were the story of the Gracchi worth without the figure of Cornelia? If I honor the fruit, I must not forget the stem which bears it. Frank, I congratulate you.”
“Then you know the result of my interview, mother?”
“I know everything, and am content,” said Mrs. Leigh.
“Mrs. Leigh has reason to be content,” said Spenser, “with that which is but her own likeness.”
Spare your flattery to an old woman, Mr. Spenser. When, pray, did I” (with a most loving look at Frank) “refuse knighthood for duty's sake?”
“Knighthood?” cried Amyas. “You never told me that, Frank!”
“That may well be, Captain Leigh,” said Spenser; “but believe me, her majesty (so Hatton assures me) told him this day, no less than that by going on this quest he deprived himself of that highest earthly honor, which crowned heads are fain to seek from their own subjects.”
Spenser did not exaggerate. Knighthood was then the prize of merit only; and one so valuable, that Elizabeth herself said, when asked why she did not bestow a peerage upon some favorite, that having already knighted him, she had nothing better to bestow. It remained for young Essex to begin the degradation of the order in his hapless Irish campaign, and for James to complete that degradation by his novel method of raising money by the sale of baronetcies; a new order of hereditary knighthood which was the laughing-stock of the day, and which (however venerable it may have since become) reflects anything but honor upon its first possessors.