He threw himself as he spoke upon a chair, and indolently, but gracefully, received the kind offices, of Albert, who undid the coarse buttonings of the leathern gamashes which defended his legs, and spoke to him the whilst:—“What a fine specimen of the olden time is your father, Sir Henry! It is strange I should not have seen him before;—but I heard my father often speak of him as being among the flower of our real old English gentry. By the mode in which he began to school me, I can guess you had a tight taskmaster of him, Albert—I warrant you never wore hat in his presence, eh?” “I never cocked it at least in his presence, please your Majesty, as I have seen some youngsters do,” answered Albert; “indeed if I had, it must have been a stout beaver to have saved me from a broken head.” “Oh, I doubt it not,” replied the king; “a fine old gentleman—but with that, methinks, in his countenance, that assures you he would not hate the child in sparing the rod.—Hark ye, Albert—Suppose the same glorious Restoration come round—which, if drinking to its arrival can hasten it, should not be far distant,—for in that particular our adherents never neglect their duty, suppose it come, therefore, and that thy father, as must be of course, becomes an Earl and one of the Privy Council, oddsfish, man, I shall be as much afraid of him as ever was my grandfather Henri Quatre of old Sully.—Imagine there were such a trinket now about the Court as the Fair Rosamond, or La Belle Gabrielle, what a work there would be of pages, and grooms of the chamber, to get the pretty rogue clandestinely shuffled out by the backstairs, like a prohibited commodity, when the step of the Earl of Woodstock was heard in the antechamber!” “I am glad to see your Majesty so—merry after your fatiguing journey.” “The fatigue was nothing, man,” said Charles; “a kind welcome and a good meal made amends for all that. But they must have suspected thee of bringing a wolf from the braes of Badenoch along with you, instead of a two-legged being, with no more than the usual allowance of mortal stowage for provisions. I was really ashamed of my appetite; but thou knowest I had eat nothing for twenty-four hours, save the raw egg you stole for me from the old woman’s hen-roost—I tell thee, I blushed to show myself so ravenous before that high-bred and respectable old gentleman your father, and the very pretty girl your sister—or cousin, is she?” “She is my sister,” said Albert Lee, dryly, and added, in the same breath, “Your Majesty’s appetite suited well enough with the character of a raw northern lad.—Would your Majesty now please to retire to rest?”