"Gained the prize!" exclaimed the baker, starting. "Not the gold medal, and over the heads of all thy fellows! That can never be, surely!"
"But it is even so," replied Jack. "See, here it is. Sir William says in another year I shall be able to go to college."
"Bless the boy! And have you won the prize, and come home to tell of it with such a step as that?"
"I am so tired!" said Jack wearily. "I can think of nothing but resting just now. It seemed ten miles from the schoolhouse to the head of our street."
"And you are as pale as new-bolted flour," said his father. "Sit you down in my great chair. Here, Cicely—Anne—where are you? Bring the lad a glass of ale, Cicely—or, stay, wine be better. A glass of wine, Cicely; and Cicely, bring the smallest of the pies was baked this morning. Here, Anne, my girl, do you see what has happened? Your brother has won the gold medal."
Anne came slowly forward from the back room, where she had been sitting, busily engaged in needle work. She was a tall, fair girl, with regular features, blue eyes, and a face which would have been both handsome and engaging but for its formal, repressed, and self-conscious expression. She looked like one who would never make a natural or spontaneous movement, or speak a word without thinking over all its possible consequences at least twice beforehand. She presented the greatest possible contrast to her jolly, cheerful father, as well as to her maiden cousin Cicely, who now came bustling in, carrying a goodly pasty, which, if it were the smaller of two or three, spoke well for the size of Master Lucas' oven. She was thin and wrinkled as a last year's russet apple, but her somewhat hard features were lighted up with good-humored smiles, and the roses of her youth were well dried into her cheeks.
"Lackaday!" she exclaimed, in a clear, high-pitched voice. "And so our lad has gained the prize. Lady! But who would have thought it, and he so mum and quiet about it all the time! Well, well! Would his dear mother had lived to see the day! But doubtless it is better as it is. What shall I do with the pasty, Master Lucas?"
"Pop it in Mary Brent's basket, to be sure," replied the baker. "What better place could there be? Nay, dame, you must needs take it, or you and I shall fall out. Yourself and the young ones must keep Jack's feast—eh, my lad?"
Mary Brent said no more in opposition, but withdrew with a far brighter face than she came in.
"And that's just like you, Master Lucas, and a good deed too," said Cicely. "Poor woman, I fear she often has short commons at home these days."