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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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observing to himself, ‘Lo, it is a wonderful thing-a most strange and curious trade; I marvel they have not hired a boy to take my combings and my dressings for me-would heaven they would!- an they will do this thing, I will take my lashings in mine own person, giving thanks to God for the change.’ Then he said aloud: ‘And hast thou been beaten, poor friend, according to the promise?’ ‘No, good your majesty, my punishment was appointed for this day, and peradventure it may be annulled, as unbefitting the season of mourning that is come upon us; I know not, and so have made bold to come hither and remind your grace about your gracious promise to intercede in my behalf-’ ‘With the master? To save thee thy whipping?’ ‘Ah, thou dost remember!’ ‘My memory mendeth, thou seest. Set thy mind at ease-thy back shall go unscathed-I will see to it.’ ‘Oh, thanks, my good lord!’ cried the boy, dropping upon his knee again. ‘Mayhap I have ventured far enow; and yet’.... Seeing Master Humphrey hesitate, Tom encouraged him to go on, saying he was ‘in the granting mood.’ ‘Then will I speak it out, for it lieth near my heart. Sith thou art no more Prince of Wales but king, thou canst order matters as thou wilt, with none to say thee nay; wherefore it is not in reason that thou wilt longer vex thyself with dreary studies, but wilt burn thy books and turn thy mind to things less irksome. Then am I ruined, and mine orphan sisters with me!’ ‘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, forever.’ 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, oh, 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 schoolroom 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. |
