He read the letter again. There was no need to go to Mr. Cressemer's house that night if he did not wish to do so. He was weary, he wanted to be alone to taste and savour this new thing within him that was called love. Yet something kept urging him to go, nevertheless. He could not quite have said what it was, though again the sense that he stood very much alone and friends were good—especially such a powerful one as this—crossed his mind. And, as an instance of the quite unconscious but very real revolution that had taken place in his thoughts during the last forty hours, it is to be noted that he did feel the need of friends and supporters.
Yet he was high in favour with the King and Queen, envied by every one, certain of rapid advancement.
But he no longer thought anything of this. Those great ones were on one side of a great something which he would not or could not define. He was on the other, he and the girl with eyes of crushed sapphire and a red mouth of sorrow.
It would be politic to go.... "I'll put it to chance," he said to himself at length. "How doth Ovid have it?...
"'Casus ubique valet; semper tibi pendeat hamus:
Quo minime credas gurgite, piscis erit.'
I remember Father Chilches' translation:
"'There's always room for chance, so drop thy hook,
A fish there'll be when least for it you look.'
Here goes!"
He opened his purse to find a coin with which to settle the matter, and poured out the contents into his palm. There were eight or nine gold sovereigns of Henry VIII, beautiful coins with "Hiberniæ Rex" among the other titles, which were still known as "double ryals," three gold ducats, coined in that year, with the Queen and King Consort vis-à-vis and one crown above the heads of both, and one little silver half testoon.
He put the gold back in his purse and held out the small coin upon his hand. "What is't to be, little testoon?" he said whimsically, looking at the big M and crown, "bed and thoughts of her, or the worshipful Master Cressemer and, I don't doubt, a better supper than I'm likely to get in the Tower? 'M,' I go."