The stranger was a pilgrim, then. That accounted for the clothes, but old Gamelyn had been on pilgrimage to the new shrine at Canterbury, and it had not helped his rheumatism much, and certainly had given him no such ideas as these. Guy looked up at the weary face with the brilliant eyes and smile,—they were walking together now,—and wondered.
“And what do you in London?” the pilgrim asked.
“My uncle is a goldsmith in Chepe,” said the boy.
“And are you going to be a goldsmith in Chepe too?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then you like not the plan?”
Guy hesitated. He never had talked of his feeling about the business, but he felt that this man would see what he meant. “I should like it better than anything,” he said, “if we made things like those the Bishop has. Uncle Gamelyn says that there is no profit in them, because they take the finest metal and the time of the best workmen, and the pay is no more, and folk do not want them.”
“My boy,” said the pilgrim earnestly, “there are always folk who want the best. There are always men who will make only the best, and when the two come together——” He clapped his hollowed palms like a pair of cymbals. “Would you like to make a dish as blue as the sea, with figures of the saints in gold work and jewel-work—a gold cup garlanded in flowers all done in their own color,—a shrine threefold, framing pictures of the saints and studded with orfrey-work of gold and gems, yet so beautiful in the mere work that no one would think of the jewels? Would you?”
“Would I!” said Guy with a deep quick breath.
“Our jewelers of Limoges make all these, and when kings and their armies come from the Crusades they buy of us thank-offerings,—candlesticks, altar-screens, caskets, chalices, gold and silver and enamel-work of every kind. We sit at the cross-roads of Christendom. The jewels come to us from the mines of East and West. Men come to us with full purses and glad hearts, desiring to give to the Church costly gifts of their treasure, and our best work is none too good for their desire. But here we are at Saint Paul’s. I shall see you again, for I have business on the Chepe.”