"Nothing half so sweet," replied Rochester; "for if cakes and gingerbread lie in a fair lady's eyes, and honey distils from her lips, as we tell the pretty creatures, sure her pen must be dipped in syrup and spice, but this was all gall and vinegar, though not without spirit too. The King, as soon as he saw the dog, must needs jump off his horse, to let the hound lick him. Maxwell and Boucher would have fain made away with the paper, misdoubting what it contained, I fancy; but the King would needs see it, and Chaloner, who loves a jest, bitter or sweet, untied the string from under the dog's ears, and humbly presented the paper on his knee to our royal master. At first the King turned red in the face, and his brow pricked up like the back of an old woman's wimple, but then he burst into a horse laugh, exclaiming, 'On my life, Master Jowler, thou art a witty dog, if this be thine own jest; but I doubt, like many another man's, it is but laid upon thy shoulders, poor fellow,' and thereupon he began kissing him again." "But the paper, the paper," exclaimed Overbury, "what was written on it?" "Why, faith, these words; for the King handed it about," answered Rochester,--"these words are something like them:--'Good Master Jowler, we pray you speak to the King, for he hears you every day, and he will not hear us, that it will please his Majesty to go back to London, or else the country will be undone. All our provision is spent already, and we are not able to maintain him any longer.'" "On my life," said Overbury, holding up the petition which he had received from Arabella, "I have here got another song to the same tune." "What is it, what is it?" asked Rochester. "A petition from a farmer against the purveyors," replied Overbury, "which your Lordship must needs present to the King." "Not I," answered the Viscount, bursting into a laugh, "I will present no more petitions, since that affair of the man Whitstable. You know what the King said." "No," said Sir Thomas, "I never heard." "Well, then, I will tell you," rejoined his companion. "He first read the petition, to please me, he said; then, when he saw it was about money, he swore five large oaths, to which I cannot do justice, for they were part Pagan philosophy, and part Christian blasphemy. Then he chuckled for a minute, and then he asked what the man had _ge'en_ me. I told him, nothing; and then he called me a _fule_, and said that Whitstable was no better, and so he should not have his money, because he did not know how to show himself thankful to those who asked it for him. No, no, I will present no more petitions." "But, in good sooth, you must do so in this case," said Sir Thomas Overbury, "for it is at the request of a lady." "Ay, indeed," cried Carr, somewhat more interested in the question. "What lady, may I ask, Tom?"