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But Spare answered Tinseltoes as he had done the King; and at last, finding nothing better would do, the page got up one fine morning earlier than his master, and tossed the leathern doublet out of the back window into a lane, where Spy found it and brought it to his mother. "That nasty thing!" said the old woman. "Where is the good in it?"
So it happened that Scrub and Fairfeather stayed day after day in the forest, making their hut larger and more cosy against the winter, living on wild birds' eggs, and berries, and never thinking of their lost golden leaves, or their journey to the Court. In the meantime Spare had got up and missed his doublet. Tinseltoes, of course, said he knew nothing about it.
The name of this youth was Tinseltoes, and, though he was the seventh of the King's pages in rank, nobody in all the Court had grander notions. Nothing could please him that had not gold or silver about it, and his grandmother feared he would hang himself for being made page to a cobbler. As for Spare, if anything could have troubled him, this mark of His Majesty's kindness would have done it.
The window from which Spare let himself down with a strong rope, was that from which Tinseltoes had tossed the doublet; and as the cobbler came down late in the twilight, a poor woodman, with a heavy load of fagots, stopped and stared at him in great surprise. "What is the matter, friend?" asked Spare. "Did you never see a man coming down from a back window before?"
Yet one thing vexed the heart of Tinseltoes, and that was his master's leathern doublet. But for it, he was sure people would never remember that Spare had been a cobbler; and the page took a deal of pains to let him see how much out of the fashion it was at the Court.
So much news about all sorts of great people came out of these stories, that lords and ladies ran to complain of Spare as one who spoke against people. His Majesty, being now sure that there was no example in all the palace records of such a retainer, sent forth a decree sending the cobbler away for ever from the Court, and giving all his goods to the page Tinseltoes.
The honest man had been so used to serve himself that the page was always in the way; but his merry leaves came to his aid; and, to the great surprise of his grandmother, Tinseltoes took to the new service in a wonderful way. Some said it was because Spare gave him nothing to do but play at bowls all day on the palace green.
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