"Come," he said, "you see but a little way; yet country lads do not talk of Fowey and Bristol! Who primed you?"
"I met a Master Sebastian Cabot," I said reluctantly at last, when he had pressed me more than once, "who stayed a while at a house not far from here, and had been Inspector of the Navy to King Edward. He had been a seaman seventy years, and he talked----"
"Too fast!" said Gardiner, with a curt nod. "But enough, I understand. I know the man. He is dead."
He was silent then, and seemed to have fallen suddenly into thought, as a man well might who had the governing of a kingdom on his shoulders.
Seemingly he had done with me. I looked at Sir Anthony. "Ay, go!" he said irritably, waving me off. "Go!"
And I went. The ordeal was over, and over so successfully that I felt the humiliation of the afternoon cheap at the price of this triumph; for, as I stepped down, there was a buzz around me, a murmur of congratulation and pride and excitement. On every Coton face I marked a flush, in every Coton eye I read a sparkle, and every flush and every sparkle was for me. Even the Chancellor's secretaries, grave, down-looking men, all secrecy and caution, cast curious glances at me, as though I were something out of the common; and the Chancellor's pages made way for me with new-born deference. "There is for country wits!" I heard Baldwin Moor cry gleefully, while the man who put food before me murmured of "the Cludde bull-pup!" If I read in Father Carey's face, as indeed I did, solicitude as well as relief and gladness, I marked the latter only, and hugged a natural pride to my breast. When Martin Luther said boldly that it was not only Bishop could fill a bowl, it was by an effort I refrained from joining in the laugh which followed.
For an hour I enjoyed this triumph, and did all but brag of it. Especially I wished Petronilla had witnessed it. At the end of that time--Finis, as the book says. I was crossing the courtyard, one-half of which was bathed in a cold splendor of moonlight, and was feeling the first sobering touch of the night air on my brow, when I heard some one call out my name. I turned, to find one of the Chancellor's servants, a sleek, substantial fellow, with a smug mouth, at my elbow.
"What is it?" I said.
"I am bidden to fetch you at once, Master Cludde," he answered, a gleam of sly malice peeping through the gravity of his demeanor. "The Chancellor would see you in his room, young sir."