“Only hungry—is that it?” she said, with a relieved look. “Well, eating is the best cure for that, and your favorite dinner will be here directly——roast beef; so dry your eyes.”
The boy’s face did not, however, grow much brighter, and Lady Chauncy began to knit her stern brow again. “Come, come, your Highness is hard to please to-day,” she went on; “what is amiss with you to be so naughty and discontented? Pray what can you lack? Where are your draughts, and your beautiful new horn-book, and your brave new troop-horse which his Majesty brought all the way from Cheapside in his own coach for you? You ought to be happy as the day is long, with everything dainty and to your taste to eat, and a soft bed, and the blue sky and the fair scene to look at from this casement. What, tears again?” for at these last words of Lady Chauncy’s the boy’s breath quivered very much as if the sobs were going to burst out afresh. “Nay,” she went on, “I’ll warrant they will dry up fast enough when you see what I have here for you,” and, pulling off the cover of the gilt cage, she placed it on the table. “William the gardener caught this pretty bird to-day, and I have put it in this fine cage and bring it you for a present. What do you say?”
The boy did not reply. He only looked hard at the captive bird, and still the tears seemed swelling in his throat. “It is a brave bird,” he said softly at last.
“Well, I am glad you are pleased with it,” said Lady Chauncy, “but I must be going now—and hark,” for at this moment there came a loud tap at the door, “there is Wynkin come with your dinner,” and she turned and unlocked the door for a serving-man who entered with a silver tray laden with plates and dishes, and, entrusting him with the key of the door, she went out, closing it carefully behind her.
Meanwhile the servant spread the snowy damask cloth on the carved oak table and arranged the dishes, and having helped the boy from the joint of roast beef, and poured out a goblet full of clear golden cider from a silver flagon, he took up a place behind Charles’s tall-backed chair, looking in a concerned, half-scared sort of manner at the boy when, after a few mouthfuls, he pushed aside the plate.
“Take it away,” he said.
“But your Highness has hardly eaten anything,” said Wynkin.
“No,” said Charles, “I can’t eat any more in this stifling cupboard of a place. Could you now, Wynkin?”
Wynkin grinned. “I think I could,” he said, “if——”
“If what?”