At noon Barbara dined with her mother, and in a Venetian vase upon the table there were some late roses sent from my Lord Gore’s garden at Bushy. The subtle scent of the flowers remained with the memory of that day like the perfume from censers before a sacrifice. After dinner she dressed herself, and, taking the girl who waited on her as maid, walked in the park and down past Whitehall toward the river. The girl with her noticed nothing strange, save that she was very silent, and seemed not to see the people who went by.
Leaning over the parapet of the river-walk, Barbara saw a barge moored near in, and a couple of brown children sitting at the top of the cabin steps and blowing bubbles from broken clay pipes. The soapy water in the porringer between them would not have been wasted had it been used upon their faces. But they were so brown and healthy and happy watching the bubbles sail and burst that Barbara turned away from the water-side with the first pang of the heart that she had felt that day.
Coming back past Whitehall a troop of the King’s guard came by with drums beating and trumpets blowing, and all the pomp of the Palace in their red coats and burnished steel. The girl with Barbara stopped to stare; but Barbara walked on under Hans Holbein’s gate, letting a crowd of boys rush past her to see the redcoats and hear the trumpets.
She would liked to have wandered into the fields beyond Charing village, but time was passing, and there were things to be remembered. She went straight to her room on reaching home, and, locking the door, opened an oak coffer of which she kept the key. Lying there on a green silk scarf were two pretty little flintlocks, their barrels damascened and the stocks set with silver. She took them out and, sitting on her bed, held them in her lap while she ran the ramrod down the barrels to see that the charges were safely there. The scattering of powder in the pan from the ivory powder-flask should be left till the last moment.
Barbara was putting the pistols back in the coffer when she heard voices at the far end of the gallery. It was her mother and Mrs. Jael talking together. Their footsteps came down the gallery, and a hand knocked at the door.
“Yes. Who is it?”
Mrs. Jael’s voice answered, bland and sweet:
“Mistress Barbara, my dear, my lady wishes to see you in her room.”
Barbara closed the lid of the coffer, put the keys in her bosom, and went to the door. Mrs. Jael curtesied, never forgetting her good manners.
“Will you please go to my lady’s room?”