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"Have you taken any thought for her disposal?" inquired the prelate. "No, in very deed," replied the worthy patty-maker, with some hesitation.
"Soothly, Mistress, I would not by my good will do my kinswoman an ill turn; yet either must I do so, or else hold my peace at wrong done to my Lady Foljambe, and peradventure to Master Hylton. My cousin Ricarda is not of my father's kin. She is daughter unto mine uncle, the patty-maker in the Strand. I know of no kin on my father's side." "Holy Mary!" cried the scandalised Perrote.
Alexandra, thus left alone with Clement, became so extra amiable as to set that not over-wise youth on a pinnacle of ecstasy, until she heard her father's step, when she dismissed him hastily. She did not need to have been in a hurry, for the patty-maker was stopped before he reached the threshold, by a rather pompous individual in white and blue livery.
Mr Altham knew by a glance at his costume that the man who had stopped him bore some office in the household of the Duke of Lancaster, since he not only wore that Prince's livery, but bore his badge, the ostrich feather ermine, affixed to his left sleeve. "Master Altham the patty-maker, I take it?" "He, good my master, and your servant."
"Well, mind thou, not for nothing of no sort to let on to my Lady that Father is a patty-maker. I were put forth of the door with no more ado, should it come to her ear that I am not of gentle blood like thee." "Ricarda! Is my Lady, then, deceived thereon?" "'Sh 'sh! She thinks I am a Neville, and thy cousin of the father's side. Thee hold thy peace, and all shall be well."
Our young man seemed rather anxious not to be seen, for he cast sundry suspicious glances in the direction of the girdler's, and having at length apparently satisfied himself that the patty-maker was not likely to return at once, he darted across the street, and presented himself at the window of the corner shop. Two girls were sitting behind it, whose ages were twenty and seventeen.
"A sober maid and a seemly, in good sooth," said Mr Tynneslowe, when the door was shut. "Hath she her health reasonable good? She looks but white." "Ay, good enough," said the patty-maker, who knew that Amphillis was sufficiently teased and worried by those lively young ladies, her cousins, to make any girl look pale. "Good. Well, what wages should content you?"
It was a warm afternoon in the beginning of July warm everywhere; and particularly so in the house of Master Robert Altham, the patty-maker, who lived at the corner of Saint Martin's Lane, where it runs down into the Strand. Shall we look along the Strand? for the time is 1372, five hundred years ago, and the Strand was then a very different place from the street as we know it now.
The gentlewoman shall give her note of all that lacketh, if she be preferred to the place." "And when shall she wait on the said gentlewoman?" "Next Thursday in the even, at Master Goldsmith's." "I will send her." Mr Tynneslowe declined a second helping of hypocras, and took his leave. The patty-maker saw him to the door, and then went back into his shop. "I have news for you, maids," said he.
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