But Master Gaston Carew, who had come for Nick, stood in the gathering dusk by the gate below, and stared up at the yellow square of light with a troubled look upon his reckless face.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE QUEEN’S PLAISANCE

It was a frosty morning when they all marched down to the boats that bumped along Paul’s wharf.

The roofs of London were white with frost and rosy with the dawn.  In the shadow of the walls the air lay in still pools of smoky blue; and in the east the horizon stretched like a swamp of fire.  The winking lights on London Bridge were pale.  The bridge itself stood cold and gray, mysterious and dim as the stream below, but here and there along its crest red-hot with a touch of flame from the burning eastern sky.  Out of the river, running inland with the tide, came steamy shreds that drifted here and there.  Then over the roofs of London town the sun sprang up like a thing of life, and the veil of twilight vanished in bright day with a million sparkles rippling on the stream.

Warm with piping roast and cordial, keen with excitement, and blithe with the sharp, fresh air, the red-cheeked lads skipped and chattered along the landing like a flock of sparrows alighted by chance in a land of crumbs.

“Into the wherries, every one!” cried the old precentor. "Ad unum omnes, great and small!”

“Into the wherries!” echoed the under-masters.

“Into the wherries, my bullies!” roared old Brueton the boatman, fending off with a rusty hook as red as his bristling beard.  “Into the wherries, yarely all, and we’s catch the turn o’ the tide!  ’Tis gone high water now!”

Then away they went, three wherries full, and Master Gyles behind them in a brisk sixpenny tilt-boat, resplendent in new ash-colored hose, a cloak of black velvet fringed with gold, and a brand-new periwig curled and frizzed like a brush-heap in a gale of wind.

How they had worked for the last few days!  New songs, new dances, new lines to learn; gallant compliments for the Queen, who was as fond of flattery as a girl; new clothes, new slippers and caps to try, and a thousand what-nots more.  The school had hummed like a busy mill from morning until night.  And now that the grinding was done and they had come at last to their reward,—­the hoped-for summons to the court, which had been sought so long in vain,—­the boys of St. Paul’s bubbled with glee until the under-masters were in a cold sweat for fear their precious charges would pop from the wherries into the Thames, like so many exuberant corks.

They cheered with delight as London Bridge was shot and the boats went flying down the Pool, past Billingsgate and the oystermen, the White Tower and the Traitors’ Gate, past the shipping, where brown, foreign-looking faces stared at them above sea-battered bulwarks.

The sun was bright and the wind was keen; the air sparkled, and all the world was full of life.  Hammers beat in the builders’ yards; wild bargees sang hoarsely as they drifted down to the Isle of Dogs; and in slow ships that crept away to catch the wind in the open stream below, with tawny sails drooping and rimmed with frost, they heard the hail of salty mariners.