“Ruined?  Prithee how?”

“My back is my bread, O my gracious liege! if it go idle, I starve.  An’ thou cease from study mine office is gone thou’lt need no whipping-boy.  Do not turn me away!”

Tom was touched with this pathetic distress.  He said, with a right royal burst of generosity—­

“Discomfort thyself no further, lad.  Thine office shall be permanent in thee and thy line for ever.”  Then he struck the boy a light blow on the shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, “Rise, Humphrey Marlow, Hereditary Grand Whipping-Boy to the Royal House of England!  Banish sorrow—­I will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily shall the business of thine office be augmented.”

The grateful Humphrey responded fervidly—­

“Thanks, O most noble master, this princely lavishness doth far surpass my most distempered dreams of fortune.  Now shall I be happy all my days, and all the house of Marlow after me.”

Tom had wit enough to perceive that here was a lad who could be useful to him.  He encouraged Humphrey to talk, and he was nothing loath.  He was delighted to believe that he was helping in Tom’s ‘cure’; for always, as soon as he had finished calling back to Tom’s diseased mind the various particulars of his experiences and adventures in the royal school-room and elsewhere about the palace, he noticed that Tom was then able to ‘recall’ the circumstances quite clearly.  At the end of an hour Tom found himself well freighted with very valuable information concerning personages and matters pertaining to the Court; so he resolved to draw instruction from this source daily; and to this end he would give order to admit Humphrey to the royal closet whenever he might come, provided the Majesty of England was not engaged with other people.  Humphrey had hardly been dismissed when my Lord Hertford arrived with more trouble for Tom.

He said that the Lords of the Council, fearing that some overwrought report of the King’s damaged health might have leaked out and got abroad, they deemed it wise and best that his Majesty should begin to dine in public after a day or two—­his wholesome complexion and vigorous step, assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and grace of demeanour, would more surely quiet the general pulse—­in case any evil rumours had gone about—­than any other scheme that could be devised.

Then the Earl proceeded, very delicately, to instruct Tom as to the observances proper to the stately occasion, under the rather thin disguise of ‘reminding’ him concerning things already known to him; but to his vast gratification it turned out that Tom needed very little help in this line—­he had been making use of Humphrey in that direction, for Humphrey had mentioned that within a few days he was to begin to dine in public; having gathered it from the swift-winged gossip of the Court.  Tom kept these facts to himself, however.