lerk, however, spoke with Sir Patrick, and in a manner took
possession of the young ladies. They were riding between walled courts,
substantially built, with intervals of fields and woods, or sometimes
indeed of morass; for London was still an island in the middle of
swamps, with the great causeways of the old Roman times leading to
it. The spire of St. Paul's and the square keep of the Tower had been
pointed out to them, and Jean exclaimed--

'My certie, it is a braw toon!'

But Eleanor, on her side, exclaimed--

''Tis but a flat! Mine eye wearies for the sea; ay, and for Arthur's
Seat and the Castle! Oh, I wadna gie Embro' for forty of sic toons!'

Perhaps Jean had guessed enough to make her look on London with an eye
of possession, for her answer was--

'Hear till her; and she was the first to cry out upon Embro' for a place
of reivers and land-loupers, and to want to leave it.'

There was so much that was new and wonderful that the sisters pursued
the question no further. They saw the masts of the shipping in the
Thames, and what seemed to them a throng of church towers and spires;
while, nearer, the road began to be full of market-folk, the women in
hoods and mantles and short petticoats, the men in long frocks, such as
their Saxon forefathers had worn, driving the rough ponies or donkeys
that had brought in their produce. There were begging friars in cowl and
frock, and beggars, not friars, with crutch and bowl; there were gleemen
and tumbling women, solid tradesfolk going out to the country farms they
loved, troops of 'prentices on their way to practice with the bow or
cudgel, and parties of gaily-coloured nobles, knights, squires, and
burgesses, coming, like their own party, to the meeting of Parliament.

There were continual greetings, the Duke of York showing himself most
markedly courteous to all, his dark head being almost continuously
uncovered, and bending to his saddle-bow in response to the salutations
that met him; and friendly inquiries and answers being often exchanged.
The Earl of Salisbury and his son were almost equally courteous; but in
the midst of all the interest of these greetings, soon after entering
the city at Bishopsgate, the clerk caused the two Scottish sisters to
draw up at an arched gateway in a solid-looking wall, saying that it was
here that my Lord Cardinal wished his royal kinswomen to be received, at
the Priory of St. Helen's. A hooded lay-sister looked out at a wicket,
and