I shall have plenty of time to consider how I had best shape my conduct towards him on his return; but assuredly he shall never be friendly with me again, or frighten Edith with his kisses." "Well, Walter, has it been such a dreadful business as you expected ?" the armourer asked the lad when he re-entered the shop.

"The great folks have not eaten you at any rate." "It has not been dreadful," Walter replied with a smile, "though I own that it was not pleasant when I first arrived at the great mansion; but the lady put me quite at my ease, and she talked to me for some time, and finally she bestowed on me this chain, which our lady, the queen, had herself given her." "It is a knight's chain and a heavy one," Geoffrey said, examining it, "of Genoese work, I reckon, and worth a large sum.

It will buy you harness when you go to the wars." "I would rather fight in the thickest melee in a cloth doublet," Walter said indignantly, "than part with a single link of it." "I did but jest, Walter," Geoffrey said laughing; "but as you will not sell it, and you cannot wear it, you had best give it me to put aside in my strong coffer until you get of knightly rank." "Lady Vernon said," the lad replied, "that she hoped one day it might again belong to a knight; and if I live," he added firmly, "it shall." "Oh! she has been putting these ideas into your head; nice notions truly for a London apprentice! I shall be laying a complaint before the lord mayor against Dame Vernon, for unsettling the mind of my apprentice, and setting him above his work.

And the little lady, what said she?
Did she give you her colours and bid you wear them at a tourney ?" Walter coloured hotly.
"Ah! I have touched you," laughed the armourer; "come now, out with the truth.

My lad," he added more gravely, "there is no shame in it; you know that I have always encouraged your wishes to be a soldier, and have done my best to render you as good a one as any who draws sword 'neath the king's banner, and assuredly I would not have taken all these pains with you did I think that you were always to wear an iron cap and trail a pike.