“We will go back by boat and dine, and after dinner a friend can refuse nothing. Take count of my inflictions, John Gore: Item one, to visit a female cousin and inquire into some business where she has been robbed and skinned by some rogue of a steward; and the woman is monstrously ugly, Jack, with not so much as a simper to make a man feel gallant. Item two, to go in person and render some private matter to Lord Montague who is resting—resting in one of his accursed country houses; it is no real business of mine, John Gore, but the kind of sottish business that a man allows himself to be saddled with because he is what people call trustworthy. Item three, to ride on to Portsmouth and poke my nose into certain unsavory messes there. This is what it means, sir, to be a man of affairs, and the most popular purse-carrier in an accursedly large family.” John Gore laughed at Mr. Pepys’s declamatic energy, knowing him to be a man who would read a beggar a sharp lecture and then give him sixpence to drink with on the road. “When do you start?” he asked. “To-morrow.” “And by what road?” “The Rye road, John—and a wry road it is, I wagerdown to some miserable town called Lamberhurst, in Kent. They work iron there, and I suppose the beds are full of smuts that bite and smuts that don’t. Thence to the town of Battle to find my Lord Montague, if he chances to be there and not at Cowdray. Thence on to Portsmouth, and so home. The one cup of spiced wine is that we ride by Tunbridge; I shall visit The Wells, buy apples from the country girls, drink ink, and perhaps see some fine women. And if you will take the road with me, I shall be more easy in my mind as to footpads and fleas.” Now there had flashed into John Gore’s mind the vision of Donna Gloria’s picture, with the glimpse of Thorn amid its woods and meadows. And sometimes a man is swayed by the veriest whim toward destinies that are far beyond the moment’s vision. So it proved with John Gore as he followed Mr. Pepys into the boat at Whitehall Stairs, for he promised to share with him the mellow comfort of St. Luke’s summer, and to serve as partner in the matter of rustic beds. XXVI Mr. Pepys was a gentleman whose spirits were never dashed save when he was testy for want of food or plunged into some periodical ague fit of shivering religiosity. He was an excellent companion for the road, with his vivacity and his bustling determination to get the best that life could give. John Gore and the Secretary had agreed to take no servants with them, for, as Mr. Pepys declared, “the rogues only drank their masters’ purses dry, and ran away at the first click of a pistol”—though it is highly probable that Mr. Samuel preferred to ride alone upon his travels simply because he was minded to enjoy himself without some prying rascal of a groom carrying home all manner of scandalous lies as to what Mr. Samuel said and did and drank in his hours of ease and absence.