CHAPTER VII
HONOR BRIGHT
Ordinarily speaking, there is of course rarely much difficulty in tracking little truant boys or even girls. Prince Charles was not, however, a mere ordinary little boy. He was the King’s son, and the people, who were beginning to think of fighting against King Charles on account of displeasure with some of his ways of governing, would have been very glad to get the child into their power. They thought they would be able to make a better bargain with the King, who would agree sooner to what they demanded out of fear that, if he did not do so, they might harm the little boy. There were good and just Roundheads, as those discontented persons were called, who would not have lent their aid or approval to such miserable and mean ways of settling matters, and among the many of them was the miller of Oakside. He was a strict Roundhead, and if the quarrel came to a fight, he was quite determined that he would, if it was necessary, lay down his life for what he considered the right and good cause, against the King. Still he prayed and trusted that there would not be war in the kingdom, and the sorry sight of Englishmen fighting with Englishmen. It seemed too fearful, and he now went about his work with a very grave face, though, in a general way, he was neither sad nor sour-natured, but a brave, industrious, honest, cheery man.
When Wynkin was admitted next morning to Lady Chauncy’s little sitting-room, he at once informed her of the past night’s adventures. She was very much astonished at his discovery in the Cedar Room. “’Tis certain,” she said, with almost a smile on her troubled face, “that, as my husband so often hath said, ‘A fortress is not stronger than its weakest part,’ which in this case appears, from what you tell me, Wynkin, to be Minerva’s nose. But who’d have thought it? and if your guess is correct about the red cloak, as I am persuaded it is, that is the direction in which this most naughty boy hath gone.”
And ere many days passed, Wynkin’s guesses became certainties, for, after all, Oakside was only a very few miles from the village in which his father and mother lived, for all Charles fancied he had walked an immense long way that morning before he sat down and sobbed under the oak-tree. Had the matter been merely one of coming to Oakside, and fetching him away, the little runaway would soon have been back again at the Manor, but it was not. There were now spies, and a number of other evil-minded persons, loitering for many miles round, ready to attack any of the Royalist folk, as the King’s party were called, who should attempt to carry him away from Oakside. While he was under the miller’s roof or in his care, they did not dare to touch him, as the Miller himself was a powerful Roundhead, and one who was much trusted and very wise in his way.
Meanwhile, the miller’s boy turned out a capital boy for such a small one. He was most diligent, rising with the lark, and so obliging and obedient, and, though sad sometimes, he was generally merry, singing at his work, and when the millwork was done, he would fetch in water from the well for Mistress Speedwell, and logs from the out-house for the great kitchen hearth-place, for the evenings were beginning to grow chilly, and he played cat’s cradle and spillikins with Molly, and cut out little men and women and cows and dogs from paper, to her boundless delight, and the miller, for all he was so silent, and even grim in his manner to him, was forced to yield him a good word when Mistress Speedwell would ask her husband if he did not consider that the shelter they had given the poor forlorn gipsy lad had returned as a blessing on themselves, for Mistress Speedwell did not know the truth, whatever her husband might know, or whatever he might suspect.
The only fault Mistress Speedwell had to find with him was that, though he kept himself very neat and spruce in the linen jacket and breeches she made for him, he never could be persuaded to wash the flour off his face. The reason he gave for this was that millers were always white. It was the proper thing for them to be so.
One evening she grew really angry about this, “Do you hear?” she said, “I insist on you washing your face. When you came, it was as black as a tinker’s, and then you had not been here a couple of hours before you got it all over flour. If you do not do as I bid you, I will take you and souse your head in the pail myself.”
“Please——” began the boy.
“Ah, please me no please,” she cried, turning to her husband; “will you not have the urchin obey me?”