With shouts, and jests, and laughter of no very courtly and dignified a sort, the royal party came up to the terrace; and James and his favourite, with a number of attendants, mounted the staircase, passed by the room in which Overbury had been writing, and swept on to the royal apartments.
In a minute or two after, Rochester, tall, handsome, and glowing with exercise and merriment, entered the chamber of his secretary, convulsed with laughter, and casting himself into a seat, exclaimed, "By the Lord! Overbury, here has been one of the best jests this morning I have ever seen. Did you remark, yesterday, how the King asked for Jowler, who was not with the pack?--his favourite hound, you know, whose voice, he swears, is a deal sweeter than that of the Italian music-master. Well--to-day, who should make his appearance but Jowler, with a paper tied round his neck."
"A love-letter, perhaps," said Overbury.
"Nothing half so sweet," replied Rochester; "for if cakes and gingerbread lie in a fair lady's eyes, and honey distils from her lips, as we tell the pretty creatures, sure her pen must be dipped in syrup and spice, but this was all gall and vinegar, though not without spirit too. The King, as soon as he saw the dog, must needs jump off his horse, to let the hound lick him. Maxwell and Boucher would have fain made away with the paper, misdoubting what it contained, I fancy; but the King would needs see it, and Chaloner, who loves a jest, bitter or sweet, untied the string from under the dog's ears, and humbly presented the paper on his knee to our royal master. At first the King turned red in the face, and his brow pricked up like the back of an old woman's wimple, but then he burst into a horse laugh, exclaiming, 'On my life, Master Jowler, thou art a witty dog, if this be thine own jest; but I doubt, like many another man's, it is but laid upon thy shoulders, poor fellow,' and thereupon he began kissing him again."
"But the paper, the paper," exclaimed Overbury, "what was written on it?"
"Why, faith, these words; for the King handed it about," answered Rochester,--"these words are something like them:--'Good Master Jowler, we pray you speak to the King, for he hears you every day, and he will not hear us, that it will please his Majesty to go back to London, or else the country will be undone. All our provision is spent already, and we are not able to maintain him any longer.'"
"On my life," said Overbury, holding up the petition which he had received from Arabella, "I have here got another song to the same tune."
"What is it, what is it?" asked Rochester.
"A petition from a farmer against the purveyors," replied Overbury, "which your Lordship must needs present to the King."
"Not I," answered the Viscount, bursting into a laugh, "I will present no more petitions, since that affair of the man Whitstable. You know what the King said."