“You will receive the perquisites of a secretary if you have indeed understanding,” continued Don Ruy, “but if there are no records to chronicle you will get but the pay of a page and no gifts to look for. Does it please you?”
“It is more than a poor lad who owns not even a bedding blanket could have hoped for, señor, and I shall earn the wage of a secretary. That of a page I could earn without leaving the streets and comfort.”
“Oho!” And again the eyes of Don Ruy wandered over the ill garbed figure and tried to fit it to the bit of swagger and confidence.––“I guessed at your grandfather––now I’ll have a turn at you:––Is it a runaway whom I am venturing to enroll in this respectable company of sober citizens?”
“Your Excellency!” the lad hung his head yet watched the excellency out of the corner of his eye, and took heart at the smile he saw––“it is indeed true there are some people I did not call upon to say farewell ere offering my services to you, but it is plain to see I carried away not any one’s wealth in goods and chattals.”
“That is easily to be perceived,” said Don Ruy and this time he did not laugh, for with all his light heart he was too true a gentleman to make sport of poverty such as may come to the best of men. “By our Lady, I’ve a feeling of kinship for you in that you are a runaway indeed––this note mentions the teaching of the priests––I’ll warrant they meant to make a monk of you.”
“If such hopes are with them, they must wait until 78 I am born again,” decided the lad, and again Don Ruy laughed:––the lad was plainly no putty for the moulding, and there was chance of sport ahead with such a helper to Maestro Diego.
“It will be my charge to see that you are not over much troubled with questions,” said his employer, and handed back the letter of commendation. “None need know when you were engaged for this very important work. José over there speaks Spanish as does Ysobel his wife. Tell them you are to have a bed of good quality if it be in the camp––and to take a blanket of my own outfit if other provisions fall short.”
A muttered word of thanks was the only reply, and Don Ruy surmised that the boy was made dumb by kindness when he had braced himself for quips and cuffs––knowing as he must––that he was light of build for the road of rough adventure.
“Ho!––Lad of mine!” he called when the youth had gone a few paces––“I trust you understand that you travel with a company of selected virtues?––and that you are a lucky dog to be attached to the most pious and godly tutor ever found for a boy in Spain.”
“It is to be called neighbor of these same virtues that I have come begging a bed on the sand when I might have slept at home on a quilt of feathers:”––the lad’s tongue had found its use again when there was chance for jest.