Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe saw it would be of no avail to ask this man to bear him company on his projected tour abroad; but still he himself was every day more and more bent upon going, and he long cast about for some means of breaking to his Rowena his firm resolution to join the King.  He thought she would certainty fall ill if he communicated the news too abruptly to her:  he would pretend a journey to York to attend a grand jury; then a call to London on law business or to buy stock; then he would slip over to Calais by the packet, by degrees as it were; and so be with the King before his wife knew that he was out of sight of Westminster Hall.

“Suppose your honor says you are going as your honor would say Bo! to a goose, plump, short, and to the point,” said Wamba the Jester—­who was Sir Wilfrid’s chief counsellor and attendant—­“depend on’t her Highness would bear the news like a Christian woman.”

“Tush, malapert!  I will give thee the strap,” said Sir Wilfrid, in a fine tone of high-tragedy indignation.  “Thou knowest not the delicacy of the nerves of high-born ladies.  An she faint not, write me down Hollander.”

“I will wager my bauble against an Irish billet of exchange that she will let your honor go off readily:  that is, if you press not the matter too strongly,” Wamba answered, knowingly.  And this Ivanhoe found to his discomfiture:  for one morning at breakfast, adopting a degage air, as he sipped his tea, he said, “My love, I was thinking of going over to pay his Majesty a visit in Normandy.”  Upon which, laying down her muffin, (which, since the royal Alfred baked those cakes, had been the chosen breakfast cate of noble Anglo-Saxons, and which a kneeling page tendered to her on a salver, chased by the Florentine, Benvenuto Cellini,)—­“When do you think of going, Wilfrid my dear?” the lady said; and the moment the tea-things were removed, and the tables and their trestles put away, she set about mending his linen, and getting ready his carpet-bag.

So Sir Wilfrid was as disgusted at her readiness to part with him as he had been weary of staying at home, which caused Wamba the Fool to say, “Marry, gossip, thou art like the man on ship-board, who, when the boatswain flogged him, did cry out ‘Oh!’ wherever the rope’s-end fell on him:  which caused Master Boatswain to say, ’Plague on thee, fellow, and a pize on thee, knave, wherever I hit thee there is no pleasing thee.’”

“And truly there are some backs which Fortune is always belaboring,” thought Sir Wilfrid with a groan, “and mine is one that is ever sore.”

So, with a moderate retinue, whereof the knave Wamba made one, and a large woollen comforter round his neck, which his wife’s own white fingers had woven, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe left home to join the King his master.  Rowena, standing on the steps, poured out a series of prayers and blessings, most edifying to hear, as her lord mounted his charger, which his squires led to the door.  “It was the duty of the British female of rank,” she said, “to suffer all—­all in the cause of her sovereign.  She would not fear loneliness during the campaign:  she would bear up against widowhood, desertion, and an unprotected situation.”