“Shall you carry the basket? By all means, if it please your Highness. Have a care, though, lest the tails of those whitings sully yon brave crimson velvet, and see the fowls thrust not their talons into that Spanish lace. Methinks, Master Aubrey, considering your bravery of array, you were best pocket your civility this morrow. It’ll be lesser like to harm the lace and velvet than the chicks’ legs and the fish-tails. You may keep me company an’ you will, if I be good enough to trudge alongside so fine a Whitsuntide show as you are. That’s two of ’em.”
“Of what, Aunt?” said Aubrey, feeling about as unhappy as a mixture of humiliation and apprehension could make him. If they were to meet one of Lord Oxford’s gentlemen, or one of his wealthy acquaintances, he felt as though he should want the earth to open and swallow him.
“Suits, Gentleman,” was the reply. “Blue and white the first; crimson and silver the second. Haven’t seen the green and gold yet, nor the yellow, nor purple. Suppose they’re in the wardrobe. Rather early times, to be thus bedizened, or seems so to working folks—the Abbey clock went eight but a few minutes since. But quality is donned early, I know.”
As Mistress Temperance emitted this tingling small-shot of words, she was marching with some rapidity up Old Palace Yard and the Abbey Close, her magnificent nephew keeping pace with her, right sore against his will. At last Aubrey could bear no longer. The windows of the Golden Fish were in sight, and his soul was perturbed by a vision of the fair Dorothy, who might be looking out, and whose eyes might light on the jewel of himself in this extremely incongruous setting of Aunt Temperance and the fish-tails.
“Aunt Temperance, couldn’t—” Aubrey’s words did not come so readily as usual, that morning.
“Couldn’t I walk slower?” suggested the aggravating person who was the cause of his misery. “Well, belike I could.—There’s Mrs Gertrude up at the window yonder—without ’tis Mrs Dorothy.—There’s no hurry in especial, only I hate to waste time.”
And suiting the action to the word, Aunt Temperance checked her steps, so as to give the young lady, whether it were Gertrude or Dorothy, a more leisurely view of the fish-tails.
“Couldn’t Rachel go marketing instead of you?” sputtered out Aubrey.
“Rachel has her own work; and so has Charity. And so have I, Mr Louvaine. I suppose you haven’t, as you seem to be gallivanting about Westminster in crimson and silver at eight o’clock of a morning. Now then—”
“Aunt, ’tis not my turn this morrow to wait on my Lord’s lever. I shall be at his coucher this even.”