and shut the door, Amphillis, and stare not thus like a
goose! What wouldst?"

Amphillis neither came in nor shut the door. She held it in her hand,
while she said in a shy way, "The patties are ready to come forth, if
one of you will come," and then she disappeared, as if frightened of
staying a minute longer than she could help.

"`Ready to come forth!'" echoed Ricarda. "Cannot the stupid thing take
them forth by herself?"

"I bade her not do so," explained her sister, "but call one of us--she
is so unhandy. Go thou, Ricarda, or she'll be setting every one wrong
side up."

Ricarda, with a martyr-like expression--which usually means an
expression very unlike a martyr's--rose and followed Amphillis.
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. Liveries were then worn far more commonly
than now--not by servants only, but by officials of all kinds, and by
gentlemen retainers of the nobles--sometimes even by nobles themselves.
To wear a friend's livery was one of the highest compliments that could
be paid. 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."

"A certain lady would fain wit of you, Master, if you have at this
present dwelling with you a daughter named Amphillis?"

"I have no daughter of that name. I have two daughters, whose names be
Alexandra and Ricarda, that dwell with me; likewise one wedded, named
Isabel. I have a niece named Amphillis."

"That dwelleth with you?"

"Ay, she doth at this present, sithence my sister, her mother, is
departed [dead]; but--"

"You have had some thought of putting her forth, maybe?"

Mr Altham looked doubtful.

"Well! we have talked thereof, I and my maids; but no certain end was
come to thereabout."

"That is it which the lady has heard. Mistress Walton the silkwoman, at
the Wheelbarrow, spake with this lady, saying such a maid there was, for
whom you sou