“’Tis impossible,” said the bishop. “Bethink thee, goodman, the lad, though clever in his craft, is youngest of all the workmen. Thou hast ever favoured him, and maybe art scarcely aware how much thy skill hath aided him.”
“My lord, no one knows better than myself how much and how little.”
But Gervase, to his great distress, found that his protestations were disregarded. Some, like the bishop, believed that in his zeal for his apprentice, in whom it was known that he took more than usual interest, he did not remember all the advice he had given; others were perhaps willing to yield the first place to one who as a leading burgess was greatly respected in the city, and whose illness had raised the ready sympathy of all, while ’twould have been another matter to put a lad—younger than any—there. Hardly one was there who would give the credit of more than an excellent execution to Hugh, though Elyas grew hot and fevered with his efforts to persuade them of the truth, and could scarcely keep his usually even temper under the congratulations which poured upon him, and which made him feel like a traitor, though a most unwilling traitor, to Hugh. The master of the guild, who was an old man and deaf, especially pooh-poohed his remonstrances.
“I mind me, goodman, that when thou wast a prentice, and an idle one, I ever maintained that the day would come when thou wouldst do us credit, and thy father, honest man, he cast up his hands, and ‘Alack, Master Garland,’ quoth he, ‘the day is long in coming!’ ‘The day is long in coming,’ those were his very words. What dost thou say? My hearing is not so sharp as it was—thy prentice? Ay, ay, the lad hath done well, very well, but anyone can see whose was the band that directed his.”
“Beshrew me if they will not soon persuade me that I am an old dotard, knowing neither what I say nor what I do!” cried Elyas angrily to his fellow-warden. “I shall hear next that I have carved the surs myself! Hugh shall show them what he can do when he has his next corbel to carry out alone. I will not even look at it.”
“It is said that that he will not have,” replied John Hamlyn drily.
“Not? And wherefore?”
“The judges maintain it should be given to one whose corbel has been solely his own work. I have withdrawn from the competition, having much to execute for my Lord of Pomeroy, and some say it should fall to thy man Wat, whose scratching dog is marvellously well managed, but, unless I am mistaken, the greater part hold to another man of thine—Roger. His design is most delicately intricate.”
Gervase was greatly disturbed.
“I would have had naught to do with the matter had I believed in such unfairness,” he said, with heat. “I would I had never asked the poor lad to give up his own work to do mine, nor hampered him with my design!”