“Ah, but if I lack half-a-dozen shives, how then?” said he.
“Sit down, man,” responded John. “Why, George Ferris! you are in a fever!”
“Pretty nigh,” answered he. “Is there any man in London out of one this morrow?—except you.”
“I am too thankful to be merry,” he replied. “But how goes it with Cardinal Pole?”
“His death is hourly looked for,” said Mr Ferris.
That afternoon, at the Cross and other places, was Queen Elizabeth proclaimed. Even by night men scarcely seemed to have cooled down: so glad was England of her Protestant Queen, so freely she breathed when the hand of the oppressor was withdrawn. In the afternoon of Friday died Cardinal Pole, outliving his cousin Queen Mary only twenty-four hours. John reported that the very faces he met in the streets looked freer and gladder, as if every man were now at his ease and king of himself. Now, he thought, or, at the farthest, when the Queen was crowned, would the prisons be opened. Who would come out of them?—was a very anxious question; and yet more, Who would not come? That day Marguerite wrote to Mr Rose, by Austin, who set out immediately to carry the news to the banished Gospellers; and they looked forward hopefully to seeing him ere long (Note 6). Might they look, with any thing like hope, to see another? Their judgment had given up hope long ago. But the heart will hope, even against all, until it knows assuredly that there can be hope no longer.
“Isoult,” said her husband, when he came home in the evening, “I have heard tidings that methinks shall make thee a little sorry.”
“What be they, Jack?” said she.
“The death of Mr James Basset,” he answered, “yestereven.”
Isoult wrote a little loving note to Philippa; but she heard nothing from her.