Chapter 3"My lord abbot," replied Skipwith, bowing to the priest, "the writ you speak of has been recalled; a chancery messenger was here not three days since."
ONE:Wonder was succeeded by wrathhow dare he be calm in the face of such terrible things? She tried to pull her hand out of his arm, but he held his elbow close to his side, and the little hand lay there like an imprisoned mouse.
THREE:But the strange thing was that he could not sleep, and stranger still, it was not the ache of his body that kept him awake, but the ache of his heart. Reuben was used to curling up and going to sleep like a little dog; only once had he lain awake at night, and that was with the toothache. Now he had scarcely any pain; indeed, the dull bruised feeling made him only more drowsy, but in his heart was something that made him tumble and toss, just as the aching tooth had done, made him want to snarl and bite. He rolled over and over in the straw, and was wide awake when they came to Rye. Neither did he sleep at all in the room where he and some other boys were locked for the night. The Battery gaol was full of adult rioters, so the youthful elementonly some half-dozen capturedwas shut up in the constable's house, where it played marbles and twisted arms till daylight.
THREE:"She slept a bit this afternoon. I took her a cup of tea at five, but I think the heat tries her."However, someone had to look after the invalid, and Pete might as well do it as anybody elseas long as he realised that his sick-nursing was a recreation, and not a substitute for his duties on the farm.
The reader will, perhaps, feel some surprise that an esquire of the rich and powerful Lord de Boteler should be thus competing with the yeoman for the hand of a portionless humble nief; but it is necessary to observe, in the first place, that in the fifteenth century esquires were by no means of the consideration they had enjoyed a century before. Some nobles, indeed, who were upholders of the ancient system, still regarded an esquire as but a degree removed from a knight, but these were merely exceptions;the general rule, at the period we are speaking of, was to consider an esquire simply as a principal attendant, without the least claim to any distinction beyond. Such a state of things accorded well with the temper of De Boteler;he could scarcely have endured the equality, which, in some measure, formerly subsisted between the esquire and his lord. With him the equal might be familiar, but the inferior must be submissive; and it was, perhaps, the humility of Calverley's deportment that alone had raised him to the situation he now held. Calverley, besides, had none of the requisites of respectability which would have entitled him to take a stand among a class such as esquires had formerly been."Yes, yes; but go, Lucy, and tell that Stephen Holgrave is here."Holgrave rushed on the steward, and the clash of steel rang through the church-yard.
