“Have ye no purpose now?” inquired the Father, his jolly good-humoured face showing much concern. “Yea,” manfully returned Stephen. “’Twas what I ever hoped to do, to fare on and seek our fortune in London.” “Ha! To pick up gold and silver like Dick Whittington. Poor old Spring here will scarce do you the part of his cat,” and the monk’s hearty laugh angered Stephen into muttering, “We are no fools,” but Father Shoveller only laughed the more, saying, “Fair and softly, my son, ye’ll never pick up the gold if ye cannot brook a kindly quip. Have you friends or kindred in London?” “Yea, that have we, sir,” cried Stephen; “our mother’s own brother, Master Randall, hath come to preferment there in my Lord Archbishop of York’s household, and hath sent us tokens from time to time, which we will show you.” “Not while we be feasting,” said Father Shoveller, hastily checking Ambrose, who was feeling in his bosom. “See, the knaves be bringing their grampus across the court. Here, we’ll clean our hands, and be ready for the meal;” and he showed them, under a projecting gallery in the inn yard a stone trough, through which flowed a stream of water, in which he proceeded to wash his hands and face, and to wipe them in a coarse towel suspended nigh at hand. Certainly after handling sheep freely there was need, though such ablutions were a refinement not indulged in by all the company who assembled round the well-spread board of the White Hart for the meal after the market. They were a motley company. By the host’s side sat a knight on his way home from pilgrimage to Compostella, or perhaps a mission to Spain, with a couple of squires and other attendants, and converse of political import seemed to be passing between him and a shrewd-looking man in a lawyer’s hood and gown, the recorder of Winchester, who preferred being a daily guest at the White Hart to keeping a table of his own. Country franklins and yeomen, merchants and men-at-arms, palmers and craftsmen, friars and monks, black, white, and grey, and with almost all, Father Shoveller had greeting or converse to exchange. He knew everybody, and had friendly talk with all, on canons or crops, on war or wool, on the prices of pigs or prisoners, on the news of the country side, or on the perilous innovations in learning at Oxford, which might, it was feared, even affect St. Mary’s College at Winchester. He did not affect outlandish fishes himself, and dined upon pike, but observing the curiosity of his guests, he took good care to have them well supplied with grampus; also in due time with varieties of the pudding and cake kind which had never dawned on their forest-bred imagination, and with a due proportion of good ale—the same over which the knight might be heard rejoicing, and lauding far above the Spanish or French wines, on which he said he had been half starved.