and the greatest ladies of the land doing my will--though it was all
Persian mystery to me, save when the kettle-drums began to beat and the
trumpet to blow, and in walk bareheaded the Yeomen of the Guard, all
scarlet, with a golden rose on their backs, bringing in a course of
twenty-four gold dishes; and I, as Queen's butler, receiving them.

"Then it was I opened my mouth amazed at the endless dishes filled with
niceties of earth, and the Duke's Daughter pops onto my tongue a mouthful
of the first dish brought, and then does the same to every Yeoman of the
Guard that carried a dish--that her notorious Majesty be safe against the
hand of poisoners. There was I, fed by a Duke's Daughter; and thus was
Jersey honoured; and the Duke's Daughter whispers to me, as a dozen other
unmarried ladies enter, 'The Queen liked not the cut of your frieze
jerkin better than do I, Seigneur.' With that she joins the others, and
they all kneel down and rise up again, and lifting the meat from the
table, bear it into the Queen's private chamber.

"When they return, and the Yeomen of the Guard go forth, I am left alone
with these ladies, and there stand with twelve pair of eyes upon me,
little knowing what to do. There was laughter in the faces of some, and
looks less taking in the eyes of others; for my Lord Leicester was to
have done the duty I was set to do that day, and he the greatest gallant
of the kingdom, as all the world knows. What they said among themselves
I know not, but I heard Leicester's name, and I guessed that they were
mostly in the pay of his soft words. But the Duke's Daughter was on my
side, as was proved betimes when Leicester made trouble for us who went
from Jersey to plead the cause of injured folk. Of the Earl's enmity to
me--a foolish spite of a great nobleman against a Norman-Jersey
gentleman--and of how it injured others for the moment, you all know; but
we had him by the heels before the end of it, great earl and favourite as