"Tony," cried the page, standing in the gateway of the Golden Stag, and turning half-round towards a sort of covered half-enclosed shed or booth in the court yard, where the English servant, who had accompanied the two travellers on their journey to Heidelberg, was cleaning a pair of his master's silver stirrups, "here's a man inquiring for my lord, and I cannot make out a word that he says."
"What does he want?" cried Tony from the shed, rubbing away as hard as if his life depended upon making the stirrups look brighter than the groom had been able to render them.
"I can't tell," replied the boy; "but he seems to want to give me a hundred crowns."
"Take them, take them," rejoined the man, sagaciously, "and ask no questions. I'll tell you what, Frill, always take gold when you can get it. It comes slow, goes fast, and calls no man master long: a very changeable servant; but a very useful one, while we have him; and there is no fear of his growing old in our service. Don't let the man know you can speak French, or he might put you to disagreeable interrogatories. Pocket and be silent; it is the way many a man becomes great in this world."
The advice was given in that sort of bantering tone, which showed evidently that it was not intended to be strictly followed; and the page, taking the crowns, held them up before the eyes of the man who brought them, saying: "For Algernon Grey?"
"Ja, Ja!" said the German servant; "for Algernon Grey;" and, adding a word or two more, which might have been Syriac for aught the page knew, he withdrew, leaving the money in the boy's hands.
As soon as he was gone, Freville or Frill, as he was familiarly termed by the household, walked back to where his companion was at work, and quietly counted over the money upon the loose board which formed the only table of the shed.
"I must give this to some one to keep, till my lord's return," he said; "will you take care of it, Tony?"
"Not I," replied the servant; "I repeat the Lord's Prayer every morning and evening; the first time, to keep me out of temptation by day; the second, to defend me against it by night--I'll have none of it, Master Frill; it is a good sum, and too much for any poor man's pocket, especially where the plaket-hole is wide and the bottom somewhat leaky."
"I will take it up to Sir William, then," said the boy; "for I won't keep it myself. It would be risking my lord's money sadly. Even now my fingers begin to feel somewhat sticky, as if I had been handling the noses of horse-chestnut buds."