“So he even proffered on his way,” said the Baron. “He is a fair and knightly youth. ’Tis pity of him that he holds with the Frenchwoman. Ha, Bernard, ’tis for thy good.” For the boy was clinging tight to his sister, and declaring that his Grisly should never leave him again, not for twenty vile runaway husbands. Grisell returned to all her old habits, and there was no difference in her position, excepting that she was scrupulously called Dame Grisell Copeland. Her father was soon called away by the summons to Parliament, sent forth in the name of King Henry, who was then in the hands of the Earl of Warwick in London. The Sheriff’s messenger who brought him the summons plainly said that all the friends of York, Salisbury, and Warwick were needed for a great change that would dash the hopes of the Frenchwoman and her son. He went with all his train, leaving the defence of the castle to Ridley and the ladies, and assuring Grisell that she need not be downhearted. He would yet bring her fine husband, Sir Leonard, to his marrow bones before her. Grisell had not much time to think of Sir Leonard, for as the summer waned, both her mother and Bernard sickened with low fever. In the lady’s case it was intermittent, and she spent only the third day in her bed, the others in crouching over the fire or hanging over the child’s bed, where he lay constantly tossing and fevered all night, sometimes craving to be on his sister’s lap, but too restless long to lie there. Both manifestly became weaker, in spite of all Grisell’s simple treatment, and at last she wrung from the lady permission to send Ridley to Wearmouth to try if it was possible to bring out Master Lambert Groot to give his advice, or if not, to obtain medicaments and counsel from him. The good little man actually came, riding a mule. “Ay, ay,” quoth Ridley, “I brought him, though he vowed at first it might never be, but when he heard it concerned you, mistress—I mean Dame Grisell—he was ready to come to your aid.” Good little man, standing trim and neat in his burgher’s dress and little frill-like ruff, he looked quite out of place in the dark old hall. Lady Whitburn seemed to think him a sort of magician, though inferior enough to be under her orders. “Ha! Is that your Poticary?” she demanded, when Grisell brought him up to the solar. “Look at my bairn, Master Dutchman; see to healing him,” she continued imperiously. Lambert was too well used to incivility from nobles to heed her manner, though in point of fact a Flemish noble was far more civilised than this North Country dame. He looked anxiously at Bernard, who moaned a little and turned his head away. “Nay, now, Bernard,” entreated his sister; “look up at the good man, he that sent you the sugar-balls. He is come to try to make you well.”