'When I'm a man, will Mr Philip Sidney let me be his esquire? Aunt Lou says p'raps he will, if you ask him.'
'My boy will not be a man for many a year yet,' Mary said, pressing the child closer. 'And he would not leave his mother even for Mr Philip Sidney.'
Ambrose sat upright, and said,—
'I would come back to you, as Humphrey Ratcliffe comes back to his mother, but I'd like to ride off with Mr Sidney when I am a man.'
'Yes, yes, my boy, all in good time.'
'And I must learn to ride and wrestle, and—oh! a hundred things. I wish to be a man like Mr Philip Sidney.'
'May you ever be as good, noble, and learned, my son; but come, the sun is gone to bed, and Ambrose must go too.'
Then, with loving hands, she prepared her child for his bed, smoothing back the shining hair from the pure white brow, where the blue veins were clearly traced, and Ambrose knelt at her knee and repeated his little prayer, adding, with childlike simplicity, after the Amen,—
'Pray, God, make me a good man, like Mr Philip Sidney.'
While Mary Gifford and little Ambrose were thus together in the upper chamber of Ford Manor, Lucy Forrester had reached the old timbered house by the lych gate of Penshurst Church, and had obtained admission at Goody Salter's door, and put the wheaten cake and two eggs on the little rickety table which stood against the wall in the dark, low room. The old woman's thanks were not very profuse, hers was by no means a grateful disposition, and, perhaps, there was no great inducement for Lucy to prolong her visit. However that might be, it was very short, and she was soon outside again, and standing in the village street, looking right and left, as if expecting to see someone coming in either direction. It had not escaped Mary Gifford's notice that Lucy dressed herself with more than ordinary care. She wore the short skirt of the time, which displayed her small feet and ankles to advantage.