When London Burned : a Story of Restoration Times and the Great Fire by G. A. Henty (best large ereader TXT) 📖

her rescue. Bertha said that you were a very proper young gentleman, and that she was sure you were nice. Dorothy didn't say much, but she evidently approved of the younger girls' sentiments, so I felt that you must be all right, for the girls are generally pretty severe critics, and very few of my friends stand at all high in their good graces. What amusement are you most fond of?"

"I am afraid I have had very little time for amusements," Cyril said. "I was very fond of fencing when I was in France, but have had no opportunity of practising since I came to England. I went to a bull-bait once, but thought it a cruel sport."

"I suppose you go to a play-house sometimes?"

"No; I have never been inside one. A good deal of my work has been done in the evening, and I don't know that the thought ever occurred to me to go. I know nothing of your English sports, and neither ride nor shoot, except with a pistol, with which I used to be a good shot when I was in France."

They rowed down as low as Greenwich, then, as the tide turned, made their way back; and by the time Cyril alighted from the boat at London Bridge stairs the two young fellows had become quite intimate with each other.

Nellie looked with great approval at Cyril as he came downstairs in a full Court dress. Since the avowal she had made of her fault she had recovered much of her brightness. She bustled about the house, intent upon the duties she had newly taken up, to the gratification of Mrs. Dowsett, who protested that her occupation was gone.

"Not at all, mother. It is only that you are now captain of the ship, and have got to give your orders instead of carrying them out yourself. Father did not pull up the ropes or go aloft to furl the sails, while I have no doubt he had plenty to do in seeing that his orders were carried out. You will be worse off than he was, for he had John Wilkes, and others, who knew their duty, while I have got almost everything to learn."

Although her cheerfulness had returned, and she could again be heard singing snatches of song about the house, her voice and manner were gentler and softer, and Captain Dave said to Cyril,—

"It has all turned out for the best, lad. The ship was very near wrecked, but the lesson has been a useful one, and there is no fear of her being lost from want of care or good seamanship in future. I feel, too, that I have been largely to blame in the matter. I spoilt her as a child, and I spoilt her all along. Her mother would have kept a firmer hand upon the helm if I had not always spoken up for the lass, and said, 'Let her have her head; don't check the sheets in too tautly.' I see I was wrong now. Why, lad, what a blessing it is to us all that it happened when it did! for if that fire had been but a month earlier, you would probably have gone away with the Earl, and we should have known nothing of Nellie's peril until we found that she was gone."

"Sir Cyril—no, I really cannot call you Cyril now," Nellie said, curtseying almost to the ground after taking a survey of the lad, "your costume becomes you rarely; and I am filled with wonder at the thought of my own stupidity in not seeing all along that you were a prince in disguise. It is like the fairy tales my old nurse used to tell me of the king's son who went out to look for a beautiful wife, and who worked as a scullion in the king's palace without anyone suspecting his rank. I think fortune has been very hard upon me, in that I was born five years too soon. Had I been but fourteen instead of nineteen, your Royal Highness might have cast favourable eyes upon me."

"But then, Mistress Nellie," Cyril said, laughing, "you would be filled with grief now at the thought that I am going away to the wars."

The girl's face changed. She dropped her saucy manner and said earnestly,—

"I am grieved, Cyril; and if it would do any good I would sit down and have a hearty cry. The Dutchmen are brave fighters, and their fleet will be stronger than ours; and there will be many who sail away to sea who will never come back again. I have never had a brother; but it seems to me that if I had had one who was wise, and thoughtful, and brave, I should have loved him as I love you. I think the princess must always have felt somehow that the scullion was not what he seemed; and though I have always laughed at you and scolded you, I have known all along that you were not really a clerk. I don't know that I thought you were a prince; but I somehow felt a little afraid of you. You never said that you thought me vain and giddy, but I knew you did think so, and I used to feel a little malice against you; and yet, somehow, I respected and liked you all the more, and now it seems to me that you are still in disguise, and that, though you seem to be but a boy, you are really a man to whom some good fairy has given a boy's face. Methinks no boy could be as thoughtful and considerate, and as kind as you are."

"You are exaggerating altogether," Cyril said; "and yet, in what you say about my age, I think you are partly right. I have lived most of my life alone; I have had much care always on my shoulders, and grave responsibility; thus it is that I am older in many ways than I should be at my years. I would it were not so. I have not had any boyhood, as other boys have, and I think it has been a great misfortune for me."

"It has not been a misfortune for us, Cyril; it has been a blessing indeed to us all that you have not been quite like other boys, and I think that all your life it will be a satisfaction for you to know that you have saved one house from ruin, one woman from misery, and disgrace. Now it is time for you to be going; but although you are leaving us tomorrow, Cyril, I hope that you are not going quite out of our lives."

"That you may be sure I am not, Nellie. If you have reason to be grateful to me, truly I have much reason to be grateful to your father. I have never been so happy as since I have been in this house, and I shall always return to it as to a home where I am sure of a welcome—as the place to which I chiefly owe any good fortune that may ever befall me."

The lev�e was a brilliant one, and was attended, in addition to the usual throng of courtiers, by most of the officers and gentlemen who were going with the Fleet. Cyril was glad indeed that he was with the Earl of Wisbech and his son, for he would have felt lonely and out of place in the brilliant throng, in which Prince Rupert's face would have been the only one with which he was familiar. The Earl introduced him to several of the gentlemen who would be his shipmates, and by all he was cordially received when the Earl named him as the gentleman who had rescued his daughters from death.

At times, when the Earl was chatting with his friends, Cyril moved about through the rooms with Sydney, who knew by appearance a great number of those present, and was able to point out all the distinguished persons