They stood together earnestly watching for the coming of the uncle, feeling quite uncertain whether to expect a frail old broken man, or to find themselves absolutely deluded, and made game of by the jester.
The gardens were nearly empty, for most people were sitting over their supper-tables after the business of the day was over, and only one or two figures in black gowns paced up and down in conversation.
“Come away, Ambrose,” said Stephen at last. “He only meant to make fools of us! Come, before he comes to gibe us for having heeded a moment. Come, I say—here’s this man coming to ask us what we are doing here.”
For a tall, well-made, well-dressed personage in the black or sad colour of a legal official, looking like a prosperous householder, or superior artisan, was approaching them, some attendant, as the boys concluded belonging to the Temple. They expected to be turned out, and Ambrose in an apologetic tone, began, “Sir, we were bidden to meet a—a kinsman here.”
“And even so am I,” was the answer, in a grave, quiet tone, “or rather to meet twain.”
Ambrose looked up into a pair of dark eyes, and exclaimed “Stevie, Stevie, ’tis he. ’Tis uncle Hal.”
“Ay, ’tis all you’re like to have for him,” answered Harry Randall, enfolding each in his embrace. “Lad, how like thou art to my poor sister! And is she indeed gone—and your honest father too—and none left at home but that hunks, little John? How and when died she?”
“Two years agone come Lammastide,” answered Stephen. “There was a deadly creeping fever and ague through the Forest. We two sickened, and Ambrose was so like to die that Diggory went to the abbey for the priest to housel and anneal him, but by the time Father Simon came he was sound asleep, and soon was whole again. But before we were on our legs, our blessed mother took the disease, and she passed away ere many days were over. Then, though poor father took not that sickness, he never was the same man again, and only twelve days after last Pasch-tide he was taken with a fit and never spake again.”
Stephen was weeping by this time, and his uncle had a hand on his shoulder, and with tears in his eyes, threw in ejaculations of pity and affection. Ambrose finished the narrative with a broken voice indeed, but as one who had more self-command than his brother, perhaps than his uncle, whose exclamations became bitter and angry as he heard of the treatment the boys had experienced from their half-brother, who, as he said, he had always known as a currish mean-spirited churl, but scarce such as this.
“Nor do I think he would have been, save for his wife, Maud Pratt of Hampton,” said Ambrose. “Nay, truly also, he deemed that we were only within a day’s journey of council from our uncle Richard at Hyde.”