“There stood I, butler to the Queen,” he said, with a large gesture, “but what knew I of butler’s duties at Greenwich Palace! Her Majesty had given me an office where all the work was done for me. Odd’s life! but when I saw the Gentleman of the Rod and his fellow get down on their knees to lay the cloth upon the table, as though it was an altar at Jerusalem, I thought it time to say my prayers. There was naught but kneeling and retiring. Now it was the saltcellar, the plate, and the bread; then it was a Duke’s Daughter--a noble soul as ever lived--with a tasting-knife, as beautiful as a rose; then another lady enters who glares at me, and gets to her knees as does the other. Three times up and down, and then one rubs the plate with bread and salt, as solemn as St. Ouen’s when he says prayers in the royal court. Gentles, that was a day for Jersey. For there stood I as master of all, the Queen’s butler, and the greatest ladies of the land doing my will--though it was all Persian mystery to me, save when the kettle-drums began to beat and the trumpet to blow, and in walked bareheaded the yeomen of the guard, all scarlet, with a golden rose on their backs, bringing in a course of twenty-four gold dishes, and I, as Queen’s butler, receiving them. “Then it was I opened my mouth, amazed at the endless dishes filled with niceties of earth, and the Duke’s Daughter pops onto my tongue a mouthful of the first dish brought, and then does the same to every yeoman of the guard that carried a dish--that her notorious Majesty be safe against the hand of poisoners. There was I, fed by a Duke’s Daughter; and thus was Jersey honored; and the Duke’s Daughter whispers to me, as a dozen other unmarried ladies enter, ‘The Queen liked not the cut of your frieze jerkin better than do I, seigneur.’ With that she joins the others, and they all kneel down and rise up again, and, lifting the meat from the table, bear it into the Queen’s private chamber. “When they return, and the yeomen of the guard go forth, I am left alone with these ladies, and there I stand with twelve pairs of eyes upon me, little knowing what to do. There was laughter in the faces of some, and looks less taking in the eyes of others; for my Lord Leicester was to have done the duty I was set to do that day, and he the greatest gallant of the kingdom, as all the world knows. What they said among themselves I know not, but I heard Leicester’s name, and I guessed that they were mostly in the pay of his soft words. But the Duke’s Daughter was on my side, as was proved betimes when Leicester made trouble for us who went from Jersey to plead the cause of injured folk. Of the earl’s enmity to me--a foolish spite of a great nobleman against a Norman-Jersey gentleman--and of how it injured others for the moment, you all know; but we had him by the heels before the end of it, great earl and favorite as he was.”