There was no great increase of gaiety even here, for Henry was extremely occupied, both with regulating matters for government during his absence, and in training the troops who began to flock to his standard; so that the Queen complained that his presence in England was of little service to her, since he never had any leisure, and there were no pastimes.

‘Well, Dame,’ said Henry, gaily, ’there is one revel for you.  I have promised to knight the Lord Mayor, honest Whittington, and I hear he is preparing a notable banquet in the Guild Hall.’

‘A city mayor!’ exclaimed Queen Catherine, with ineffable disgust.  ’My brothers would sooner cut off his roturier head than dub him knight!’

‘Belike,’ said Henry, dryly; ’but what kind of friends have thy brothers found at Paris?  Moreover, this Whittington may content thee as to blood.  Rougedragon hath been unfolding to me his lineage of a good house in Gloucestershire.’

‘More shame that he should soil his hands with trade!’ said the Queen.

’See what you say when he has cased those fair hands in Spanish gloves.  You ladies should know better than to fall out with a mercer.’

‘Ah!’ said Duke Humfrey, ’they never saw the silks and samites wherewith he fitted out my sister Philippa for the Swedes!  Lucky the bride whose wardrobe is purveyed by honest Dick!’

’Is it not honour enough for the mechanical hinds that we wear their stuffs,’ said Countess Jaqueline, ’without demeaning ourselves to eat at their boards?  The outrecuidance of the rogues in the Netherlands would be surpassing, did we feed it in that sort.’

‘’Tis you that will be fed, Dame Jac,’ laughed Henry.  ’I can tell you, their sack and their pasties, their march-pane and blanc-manger, far exceed aught that a poor soldier can set before you.’

‘Moreover,’ observed Humfrey, ’the ladies ought to see the romaunt of the Cat complete.’

‘How!’ cried Jaqueline, ’is it, then, true that this Vittentone is the miller’s son whose cat wore boots and made his fortune?’

‘I have heard my aunt of Orleans divert my father with that story,’ murmured Catherine.  ’How went the tale?  I thought it folly, and marked it not.  What became of the cat?’

‘The cat desired to test his master’s gratitude, so tells Straparola,’ said the Duke of Orleans, in his dry satirical tone; ’and whereas he had been wont to promise his benefactor a golden coffin and state funeral, Puss feigned death, and thereby heard the lady inform her husband that the old cat was dead. “A la bonne heure!” said the Marquis.  “Take him by the tail, and fling him on the muck-heap beneath the window!"’

‘Thereof I acquit Whittington, who never was thankless to man or brute,’ said King Henry.  ’Moreover, his cat, or her grandchildren, must be now in high preferment at the King of Barbary’s Court.’

‘A marvellous beast is that cat,’ said James.  ’When I was a child in Scotland, we used to tell the story of her exchange for a freight of gold and spices, only the ship sailed from Denmark,’