“There is no occasion to assume a name at all,” answered Julian. “I do not incline to use a borrowed one, especially as I may meet with some one who knows my own.”
“I will call you Julian, then,” said Master Ganlesse; “for Peveril will smell, in the nostrils of mine host, of idolatry, conspiracy, Smithfield faggots, fish on Fridays, the murder of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, and the fire of purgatory.”
As he spoke thus, they alighted under the great broad-branched oak tree, that served to canopy the ale-bench, which, at an earlier hour, had groaned under the weight of a frequent conclave of rustic politicians. Ganlesse, as he dismounted, whistled in a particularly shrill note, and was answered from within the house.
CHAPTER XXII
He was a fellow in a peasant’s garb;
Yet one could censure you a woodcock’s carving.
Like any courtier at the ordinary.
—THE ORDINARY.
The person who appeared at the door of the little inn to receive Ganlesse, as we mentioned in our last chapter, sung, as he came forward, this scrap of an old ballad,—
“Good even to you, Diccon;
And how have you sped;
Bring you the bonny bride
To banquet and bed?”
To which Ganlesse answered, in the same tone and tune,—
“Content thee, kind Robin;
He need little care,
Who brings home a fat buck
Instead of a hare.”