I have said above of this early friendship between a lad of eleven and a maid not half that age, that it endured five years. For at the end of that period the comradeship indeed was broken, and a term was set to the habit of community in all things that was to me at least so comfortable. The day that took my companion to reside in the town of Sherborne, there to attend the King's School, brought on my small mind its first remembered sorrow; wherefore I wept greatly, and would not for many days be comforted. At the time I did not understand (as how should I, being but ten years of age?) the reasons of this so sudden change in his mother's intention. But I have since learned that two causes, of which I myself, poor maid, was one, determined the Lady Mary Royston to take her son from the hands of the learned and pious governor who should have led him in the path of learning and conduct even up to the gates of the University of Oxford. Thus her late husband had intended, but, the tutor growing lazy and overeasy perhaps, while Ned would ever more frequently take the bit of control fast between the teeth of stubbornness, she was minded to subject him to sterner authority. She was moved, moreover, like many another parent of an only son, by some measure of jealousy, directed, in her case, toward "the wild little maid of Drayton," as she would call me; for, with all his duty to his mother, no words or wishes of hers could shake that notable and constant affection that Ned did then, as ever, spend upon me. Knowing, too, by her late husband, of the papistical bias (as she would say) of the Drayton family more than others of those parts had learned, she was ever in dread (pursuing Mr. Nathaniel Royston's policy of caution) lest our acquaintance should lead her or her son into some seeming of complicity with traitors. For we were then in the year 1678 and the full tide of the Popish Plot. But I have always believed that I was far more in this matter of sending Ned to Sherborne than Dr. Titus Gates or the whole College of Cardinals.  
By this and by that, certain it is that go to Sherborne he did, and that my days had been from that hour very cheerless but for a notable addition to our family, bringing some measure of solace to a mighty sore little heart.
 
When he heard that Ned was gone, and that the tutor knew not where to turn himself for a living after his dismission by the Lady Mary, my good father mounted his horse and rode over to Royston, leaving me marvelling greatly at the courage and hardihood of a man that dared encounter a woman so formidable as I then held Ned's mother to be. For only twice had I been with him to Royston Chase, and the second time even happier to be gone than the first. So it was that I deemed my father a very St. George that could face cheerfully this dragon.
 
He had along with him a mounted servant, leading a quiet pad-nag, which returned after sundown sorely burdened with the great person of the Rev. Joshua Telgrove. I stood on the steps for my father's embrace (always my privilege on his return), and when the little party was dismounted with no small difficulty to Mr. Telgrove and the assistant groom, "Mistress Philippa," says Sir Michael, with something of ceremony in his manner of speech, "this is Mr. Telgrove, who hath taught your friend, Master Royston, these many years."
 
"That I know well, sir," I replied, trembling; for I feared the old man greatly, having seen him but thrice, and ascribing great austerity to him that had ruled a being so great as my friend and idol.
 
"And now," he continued, with a little grim smile that was yet not unkind, "Mr. Telgrove has a mind to teach my little half-broke filly" (for so the dear and tender gentleman was wont to pun upon my name), "and I have a mind he should at least make the endeavor."
 
At this I trembled yet more, and was abashed to a stubborn silence, resolving with a mighty vow in my heart that from none but Ned would I learn. And I finding in the days that followed that my tutor was the mildest of men, and in face of childish wilfulness the most indolent, it was like to have gone mighty hard with my advancement in learning had he not discovered a rod to rule me as by some charm of magic. For coming very soon, with the keen insight of childhood, to fear him not at all, I would in no manner give him rest nor ease, neither by learning my task nor by sitting mumchance, which at first, mayhap, had pleased him near as well, unless he would be talking of Ned. Now Mr. Telgrove had a great and tender affection to his late pupil, and perceiving that I even surpassed him in this, he came, I think, to some measure of love for his new one. With that rose in him the wish that I should do him credit, even as Ned had done; and he made an ordinance that the name, so dear alike to master and scholar, should not be breathed until the task of the day was not only conned but fairly committed and recited. To this rule he did so constantly, for a nature of his softness, adhere, that before six months were past I was much advanced in wisdom, and grown to love my lessons only next in order to their reward—those long colloquies, to wit, in which he would tell me every adventure, escapade, and other act, good or bad, of Ned's childhood. These stories, indeed, soon grew old, but to me and my tutor never trite nor stale. Then from time to time he would read aloud to me, in part or at length, the letters received from Sherborne. But to me Ned did not write.
 
Thus the months went by, and grew into years less heavily than I had thought. Mr. Telgrove was well content, having found, as he would say, a refuge for his old age. For the Act of Uniformity and the Oath of Non-resistance being against his conscience, had deprived him of his living, while the Five-Mile Act had well-nigh forbidden him to find another. Mr. N. Royston, in the performance of one of his politic acts of charity, his house of Royston Chase being neither near Mr. Telgrove's former incumbency, nor within the proscribed distance of a corporate town, had obtained a good teacher for his son; but I think the good man's power of struggling with a persecuting world was exhausted in his one act of renunciation, and he was left with little desire for aught but a peaceful abode and the leisure to study the great writers of antiquity in a cloud of smoke from his tobacco pipe. His opinions in matters theological and ecclesiastical had, with the passage of time, so softened, that Sir Michael would playfully attack him for a Latitudinarian, an Arminian, or what not, while I on winter evenings would search among my tutor's books that I might plague him with accusation of strange heresies.
 
But this was after Mr. Telgrove had resided with us some four years, and young Mr. Royston had proceeded from Sherborne to Corpus Christi College, in the University of Oxford, having in the meantime but once visited Royston—one happy summer for me, in my fourteenth year, during two months of which he would ride over to us, not indeed with the frequency of the past, but often twice, and sometimes even three times, in the seven days. Yet, though I say I was happy, it was not as it had been. Something of the distance that had grown between him and me would force itself upon the mind, now of one, now of the other. Pondering the matter from the watch-tower of my present content, I hold that the child in Mistress Phil was ever crying out for the older terms of alliance, with their reckless mirth and unchecked license of jollity, while the woman, unheeded, but waxing ever stronger within, would as often clap stern hand upon the clamorous lips of youth, and so produce that outward show of petulance which is as baffling to the youth in his twentieth as it is alluring to the man in his thirtieth year. Then, too, it was that I first gave thought to the manner of my appearance in the eyes of others, and would ask my glass, I knew not why, for evidence of grace and beauty in person and countenance. And the mirror was a stern arbiter, showing only gaunt length of limb and sunbrowned uncouthness of feature, overhung by heavy brows, and supported, when mirth would display them, by a regiment of very white teeth.
 
"Dear Ned," I would say, "I would I were fair!"
 
"Some day you will be so," he would answer.
 
"But you have grown to the stature of a man, while I——"
 
"Be content, sweetheart," he would answer. "You are like a yearling colt—nay, 't is filly I mean. How dost spell that same word filly now, Mistress Scholar? With the 'P' and the 'h' it should be, in the Grecian manner. But indeed you will overtake my growth soon enough. When I did first know you, my age to yours was as two to one and more. When I have done with Oxford, it will be but as four to three, and thou older for a woman than I for a man."
 
"Tell me, then," I said to him one day, after some such talk, "when, last summer, you were at the Court with madam your mother, and I saw you not at all, did you not see many fine ladies and women of great beauty?"
 
"Ay, many," quoth he, "but none such as you will be. Do but give the colt time."
 
And when he was gone I would marvel why I cared for the beauty I had not. And since I found no clear answer to the question in my own mind, and ventured to seek it from no other, it was well, maybe, that Ned's long absence at Oxford and in London with the Lady Mary, extending as it did over the better part of four years, put the matter in time clean out of my head. Indeed, even in our quiet corner, we had other matter to consider in those days than the vanity of a half-grown maid.
 
Now it is only in later times that I have come even to the most partial understanding of the many twists and turns in the fate of our perturbed island, that were then succeeding each other with so bewildering rapidity. This is no public history, or my ignorance would make of it a worse book yet than it promises, and I shall but recall the memory of those unquiet events that affected at this time our quiet life.
 
That same year of Ned's coming again to Royston, between his leaving Sherborne and going to Oxford, was the time of the late Duke of Monmouth's progress through England, wherein he did take upon himself so much of the state of his royal ancestry as to encourage greatly the fond belief of the common people, particularly in the west country, in that vain story of a certain Black Box, where should be found (did one credit these mystery-mongers) proof indisputable of the marriage of the Duke's mother, Mistress Lucy Walters, with his acknowledged father, King Charles II., then upon the throne. Of the merits of the matter I know nothing, but remember well how Sir Michael would say the wish was father to the thought in the minds of such as dreaded most the coming to the throne of the Papist Duke of York. He had no patience, he said, with those that went after these idle tales; yet he showed much in exhorting, threatening, and persuading those of his own people that seemed most in peril of misleading by these errors. In especial, I do recall something of a disputation between him and Simon Emmet, our steward. This good man was in a measure privileged in his intercourse with Sir Michael, being an old trooper of the first force my father had raised and led for King Charles the Martyr. He was, though Cavalier and Royalist to the marrow, a Protestant of an earnestness well-nigh fanatical.
 
Simon stood beneath the open window of my bedchamber, on the sward that there sweeps up right to the walls of the house from the park, so that I have often dropped bread to the deer grown bold in their feeding. My father leaned from the window beneath me, smoking a pipe of Virginia tobacco, while I sat gazing over the trees and busied, till my ear was caught by their words, with thought of Oxford and the Court at London. And this is what I heard:
 
Said Sir Michael Drayton: "Ill will come of this madness, Simon. To uphold the claim of a bastard to the throne you and I have fought for is not the work of a wise man nor a good."
 
"'T is not so sure the Duke is that," answered Emmet. "I, for one, hold him as well born as the other Duke" (meaning the Duke of York), "and, at any rate, my lord of Monmouth is no Papist."
 
"I had not voted for the Exclusion Bill had I been at Westminster," said my father, yet as if he had a doubt in the matter; "for I do think a Catholic may be no bad king—if he will but uphold the law."
 
"If—ay, if! I do not say a Papist must needs be a bad man nor a bad king. Not but what they all are so—for the most part," said Simon as in fear of overmuch concession. "But this is a Papist for sure, and as surely a bad man. 'T is pretty work he has had the doing of in Scotland, sir; and that not for his own superstition, but for a faith he doth not hold. Give him power and the time to use it, and what will he not attempt for the Scarlet Woman? Moreover, if the Duke of Monmouth be the King's son, born in lawful wedlock, as this same story of the Black Box would show——"
 
"No more, Simon," interrupted my father angrily. "Say not another word of that. It is rank blasphemy and treason, and I, being a faithful subject of His Majesty, and on his commission of the peace, and holding command in the train-bands, may not hear repeated what His Majesty has denied. And most of all, Simon," he continued more kindly, "I do fear this sort of wild talk will get thee into trouble. Leave it to Republicans and Fifth Monarchy Men, old friend. I fear you have been running after sectaries in your old age, Simon." He knew it well, for the old steward, like the poor land that had asked and taken many years and much blood of his youth, had passed through many contrarious fits of thought and sentiment. In religion his politic fear of Rome had well-nigh driven him out of the back door of the Church into the arms of the Puritans. As he hovered between respect of his ancient captain and present master, and the enticements of controversy, "Go, Simon!" cried Sir Michael; "bid Parson Greenlow pray with you, and read you a lecture on Passive Obedience and the Duty of Non-resistance."
 
"Humph!" muttered the old malcontent, as he walked toward the stable; "the parsons will be mighty ready to eat their sermons when the Duke's Scottish boot is on their leg. They 'll resist then, Sir Michael, even as we resisted Old Noll."
 
And so three further years went by, and Ned came not, but did spend such time as he was not in Oxford with Madam Royston in his father's noble house in Basinghall Street in the City of London. Twice did he send me a letter in those days, with no word, indeed, of love in them, but so breathing the constancy of our old terms of alliance, and bringing me so much joy, that I cannot endure they should run the risk of the cold monument of print, and so will not here set down their words.
 
And I grew in length and thickness, and, I hope, in other things beside, and had almost forgot my mirror but for the kinder and more pleasing glance it would now and again, toward the latter part of my seventeenth year, begin to throw back upon me, as I would pin a collar, or struggle to twist into some show of order the stubborn and difficult blackness of my hair.