"'There are delights in Thy right hand unto the end,'"[#] softly quoted Frideswide. "And, dear my Lady, surely they will be the sweetest unto them that had the fewest delights here below."
[#] Psalm xvi. 10.
The answer came in another quotation from the same Book. "'I am poor and needy; the Lord is mine help. My helper and my deliverer art Thou: tarry not, O my God!'"[#]
[#] Psalm xi. 17.
CHAPTER X.
AT THE PARCHMENT-MAKER'S.
"My life hath been a search for Thee,
'Mid thorns left red with Thy dear blood;
In many a dark Gethsemane
I seemed to stand where Thou hadst stood:
And, scorned in this world's judgment-place,
At times, through tears, to catch Thy face."
—ROBERT, EARL LYTTON.
The shadow was falling very low on the sun-dial in a small back yard looking into the fields to the north of Chicken Lane, which crossed the Fleet River, one end abutting upon Lither Lane (running northwards from Holborn) and the other entering Smithfield at its north-western corner. Over the sundial for a moment bent a youth of some twenty years or more, clad in a buff jerkin and working apron. His face was remarkable for the extremely good-humoured expression of the lips, and for the perfect frankness of the clear, honest eyes. Having satisfied himself as to the time of day, he re-entered the house by the back-door, which led him into a low, narrow room, fitted with a long table and sundry benches. Here half-a-dozen men and boys were at work, some engaged in preparing skins for use by scraping off the hair, some arrived at the further stages of straining or bleaching, some at the concluding point of cutting the parallelograms of parchment, the manufacture of which was manifestly their trade.
"Put up work, lads'" said the young man, as he came in, in a tone which showed him, notwithstanding his youth, to be the master. "The 'prentice-lads may be gone. I have more ado yet with Dick and Robin."
He was obeyed with that alacrity which usually finds its way into the cessation of work more readily than into its commencement, and one of the men, with the three apprentices, shouldered their tools and departed, exchanging "God be wi' you!" with the rest. When they were gone, and the two men remaining had gathered their tools into baskets, one of them said,—