"Pray do so, my good Lord. I thank your Lordship heartily." "Arthur Tremayne is set on going, if it come to hot water--as seemeth like enough." "Arthur Tremayne is a milksop, my Lord! I marvel what he means to do. His brains are but addled eggs--all stuffed with Latin and Greek." Jack, of course, like the average country gentleman of his time, was a profound ignoramus. What knowledge had been drilled into him in boyhood, he had since taken pains to forget. He was familiar with the punctilio of duelling, the code of regulations for fencing, the rules of athletic sports, and the intricacies of the gaming-table; but anything which he dubbed contemptuously "book-learning," he considered as far beneath him as it really was above. "He will be as good for the Spaniards to shoot at as any other," jocularly observed Sir Thomas. "Then pray you, let Lysken Barnevelt go!" said Jack soberly. "I warrant you she'll stand fire, and never so much as ruffle her hair." "Well, I heard say Dame Mary Cholmondeley of Vale Royal, that an' the men beat not back the Spaniards, the women should fight them with their bodkins; wherewith Her Highness was so well pleased that she dubbed the dame a knight then and there. My wife saith, an' it come to that, she will be colonel of a company of archers of Lancashire. We will have Mistress Barnevelt a lieutenant in her company." "My sister Margaret would make a good lieutenant, my Lord," suggested Jack. "We'll send Aunt Rachel to the front, with a major's commission, and Clare shall be her adjutant. As for Blanche, she may stand behind the baggage and screech. She is good for nought else, but she'll do that right well." "For shame, lad!" said Sir Thomas, laughing. "I heard her yesterday, Sir,--the occasion, a spider but half the size of a pin head." "What place hast thou for me?" inquired Lady Enville, delicately applying a scented handkerchief to her fastidious hose. "My dear Madam!" said Jack, bowing low, "you shall be the trumpeter sent to give challenge unto the Spanish commandant. If he strike not his colours in hot haste upon sight of you, then is he no gentleman." Lady Enville sat fanning herself in smiling complacency, No flattery could be too transparent to please her. "I pray your Lordship, is any news come touching Sir Richard Grenville, and the plantation which he strave to make in the Queen's Highness' country of Virginia?" asked Sir Thomas. Barbara listened again with interest. Sir Richard Grenville was a Devonshire knight, and a kinsman of Sir Arthur Basset. "Ay,--Roanoke, he called it, after the Indian name. Why, it did well but for a time, and then went to wrack. But I do hear that he purposeth for to go forth yet again, trusting this time to speed better." "What good in making plantations in Virginia?" demanded Jack, loftily. "A wild waste, undwelt in save by savages, and many weeks' voyage from this country,--what gentleman would ever go to dwell there?"