“It may be your own fault if your dream comes not true,” said Varney. “Are you needy?”
“Um!” replied Lambourne; “I love pleasure.”
“That is a sufficient answer, and an honest one,” said Varney. “Know you aught of the requisites expected from the retainer of a rising courtier?”
“I have imagined them to myself, sir,” answered Lambourne; “as, for example, a quick eye, a close mouth, a ready and bold hand, a sharp wit, and a blunt conscience.”
“And thine, I suppose,” said Varney, “has had its edge blunted long since?”
“I cannot remember, sir, that its edge was ever over-keen,” replied Lambourne. “When I was a youth, I had some few whimsies; but I rubbed them partly out of my recollection on the rough grindstone of the wars, and what remained I washed out in the broad waves of the Atlantic.”
“Thou hast served, then, in the Indies?”
“In both East and West,” answered the candidate for court service, “by both sea and land. I have served both the Portugal and the Spaniard, both the Dutchman and the Frenchman, and have made war on our own account with a crew of jolly fellows, who held there was no peace beyond the Line.” [Sir Francis Drake, Morgan, and many a bold buccaneer of those days, were, in fact, little better than pirates.]
“Thou mayest do me, and my lord, and thyself, good service,” said Varney, after a pause. “But observe, I know the world—and answer me truly, canst thou be faithful?”
“Did you not know the world,” answered Lambourne, “it were my duty to say ay, without further circumstance, and to swear to it with life and honour, and so forth. But as it seems to me that your worship is one who desires rather honest truth than politic falsehood, I reply to you, that I can be faithful to the gallows' foot, ay, to the loop that dangles from it, if I am well used and well recompensed—not otherwise.”