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"The duke's men took possession, and set John Paston's own tenants to work, very much against their wills, to destroy the mansion and break down the walls of the lodge, while they themselves ransacked the church, turned out the parson, and spoiled the images. They also pillaged very completely every house in the village.
As for John Paston's own place, they stripped it completely bare; and whatever there was of lead, brass, pewter, iron, doors or gates, or other things that they could not conveniently carry off, they hacked and hewed them to pieces. The duke rode through Hellesdon to Drayton the following day, while his men were still busy completing the wreck of destruction by the demolition of the lodge.
Paston's cheery laugh rang out from the parlor. Truesdale stood in the library before the bookcase, reading the tarnished titles of the few spare volumes, as he shifted his weight from one foot to another, uncertain whether to advance or to retire. Paston knew him for what he was; but Bertie Patterson, he felt sure, would never acknowledge that he could be guilty of any wrong.
But each was anxious to retain that possession which in those days seems really to have been nine points of the law. The duke got hold of Drayton, while Hellesdon was held for Paston. One day Paston's men made a raid upon Drayton, and carried off seventy-seven head of cattle. Another day the duke's bailiff came to Hellesdon with 300 men to see if the place were assailable.
She had already disposed of Paston's short list, and had even found a certain pleasure in the quaint and complicated addresses that abounded throughout it. But the other list, compiled by Rosy and her mother, seemed to pass all bounds; not her mother's part, which was limited to certain old-time friends and connections, but Rosy's own, which dealt with "society" almost in its entirety.
In the course of a week Arthur Paston called. Truesdale, who happened to be at home, found himself regarding Paston's presence with something the reverse of complacency, and his bearing with something that distinctly approached disapproval.
'The Lamplighter'; 'The Wide, Wide World'; oh, curse that fellow's funny stories!" as Rosy's ready laugh came from the next room. "But he's as good as I am," Truesdale was forced to avow, as he passed through the hallway and ascended to his room. "And better than lots of others. What can I say or do?" Rosy herself, however, would have asked for no change in Paston's manner.
Sir John Paston's conversations with the Duchess of Norfolk would make less than duchesses blush now. The tales that Erasmus introduces into his writings, the jests of his Colloquies, are often quite unnecessarily coarse; but one which will illustrate our point may be repeated. One winter's morning a stately matron entered St. Gudule's at Brussels to attend mass.
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