"
"No, sir, no;" the old servitor was roused by the charge of neglected
duty. "Sir Parsley, it was no fault of mine whatever. Squire undertook
to see to all of it himself. Don't blame me, sir; don't blame me."
"Never mind the blame, but make it good," Mr. Shargeloes answered,
meagrely, for he felt as if he could never be fat again. "What do I see
there? It is like a crust of bread, but I am too weak to stoop for it."
"Come inside the tree, sir." The old man led him, as a grandsire leads a
famished child. "What a shame to starve you, and you so hearty! But the
Squire clean forgotten it, I doubt, with his foreign tricks coming to
this great blow-up. Here, sir, here; please to sit down a moment, while
I light a candle. They French chaps are so wasteful always, and always
grumbling at good English victual. Here's enough to feed a family
Captain Charron has throwed by--bread, and good mutton, and pretty near
half a ham, and a bottle or so of thin nasty foreign wine. Eat away, Sir
Parsley; why, it does me good to see you. You feeds something like an
Englishman. But you know, sir, it were all your own fault at bottom, for
coming among them foreigners a-meddling."
"You are a fine fellow. You shall be my head butler," Percival
Shargeloes replied, while he made such a meal as he never made
before, and never should make again, even when he came to be the Right
Honourable the Lord Mayor of London.
CHAPTER LXIV
WRATH AND SORROW
The two most conspicuous men of the age were saddened and cast down
just now--one by the natural kindly sorrow into which all men live for
others, till others live into it for them; and one by the petulant
turns of fortune, twisting and breaking his best-woven web.
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