types and re-arrange the
letters in the compartments in order, whilst he returned to the stall.
The customers requiring his personal attention were generally late ones.
When all this was accomplished, and the pot put on again in preparation
for supper, the lads might use the short time that remained as they
would, and Hansen himself showed Ambrose a shelf of books concealed by a
blue curtain, whence he might read.

Will Wherry showed unconcealed amazement that this should be the taste
of his companion. He himself hated the whole business, and would never
have adopted it, but that he had too many brothers for all to take to
the water on the Thames, and their mother was too poor to apprentice
them, and needed the small weekly pay the Dutchman gave him. He seemed
a good-natured, dull fellow, whom no doubt Hansen had hired for the sake
of the strong arms, developed by generations of oarsmen upon the river.
What he specially disliked was that his master was a foreigner. The
whole court swarmed with foreigners, he said, with the utmost disgust,
as if they were noxious insects. They made provisions dear, and
undersold honest men, and he wondered the Lord Mayor did not see to it
and drive them out. He did not so much object to the Dutch, but the
Spaniards--no words could express his horror of them.

By and by, Ambrose going out to fetch some water from the conduit, found
standing by it a figure entirely new to him. It was a young girl of
some twelve or fourteen years old, in the round white cap worn by all of
her age and sex; but from beneath it hung down two thick plaits of the
darkest hair he had ever seen, and though the dress was of the ordinary
dark serge with a coloured apron, it was put on with an air that made it
look like some strange and beautiful costume on the slender, lithe,
little form. The vermilion apron was further trimmed with a narrow
border of white, edged again with deep blue, and it chimed in with the
bright coral earrings and necklace. As Ambrose came forward the
creature tried to throw a crimson handkerchief over her head, and ran
into the shelter of another door, but not before Ambrose had seen a pair
of large dark eyes so like those of a terrified fawn that they seemed to
carry him back to the Forest. Going back amazed, he asked his companion
who the girl he had seen could have been.

Will stared. "I trow you mean the old blackamoor sword-cutler's wench.
He is one of those pestilent strang