LAWRENCE ENCOUNTERS MR. FLIPPET
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" screeched the other. "Hear the clodhopper—all his geese are swans. I apprehend you'll be for telling me next that your Rye House is as fine an edifice as this;" and he languidly extended his hand in the direction of the house beneath whose walls they stood.
"This!" echoed Lawrence, laughing merrily. "This dog-hole of a place hold a candle to our old Rye House! Come," and briskly twitching Stars and Garters by the rein, he was about to push on, "how much farther to the king's palace?"
Mr. Alworth.
"Under this archway and across the yard," said a voice immediately behind him.
Lawrence's face fell blankly. If he had not quite anticipated walls of gold and columns of ivory, he had conceived of something statelier than this mean, patched-up-looking house. "I thank you, sir," he contrived, however, to say at last, turning to the speaker and lifting his cap deferentially, as he perceived him to be an elderly man, somewhat tall and still fairly robust, in an iron-gray periwig, and with a genial glance in his keen gray eyes, overshadowed by brows still thick and dark. The Mr. Alworth, in fact, whose acquaintance we have already made upon the heath.
"And if," continued Lawrence, "you will add to your obligation by telling me how I may come to speak with the king—"
"Ho!" chuckled the lackey; "renounce me if ever I heard the like of that!"