"And did you succeed therein?" I inquired.
"The only friends I found," he answered, with a melancholy smile, "were the gray cloisters, the old cathedral walls, the trees of the close; the only familiar voices which did greet me were the chimes of the tower, the cawing of the rooks over mine head as I sat in the shade of the tall elms near unto the wall where our garden once stood."
"Oh, doth that house and that garden no more exist?" I cried.
"No, it hath been pulled down, and the lawn thereof thrown into the close."
"Then," I said, "the poor bees and butterflies must needs fare badly. The bold rooks, I ween, are too exalted to suffer from these changes. Of Sherwood Hall did you hear aught, Mr. Genings?"
"Mr. Ironmonger," Mr. Wells said, correcting me.
"Alas!" Edmund replied, "I dared not so much as to approach unto it, albeit I passed along the high road not very far from the gate thereof. But the present inhabitants are famed for their hatred unto recusants, and like to deal rigorously with any which should come in their way."
I sighed, and then asked him how long he had been in London.
"About one month," he replied. "As I have told you. Mistress Constance, all my kinsfolk that I wot of are now dead, except my young brother John, whom I doubt not you yet do bear in mind—that fair, winsome, mischievous urchin, who was carried to La Rochelle about one year before your sweet mother died."
"Yea," I said, "I can see him yet gallopping on a stick round the parlor at Lichfield."