Brother Dusty-Feet Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoes, he had a little bright Spanish dagger in his belt. He was lean and brown, and lithe as a wild cat, with very long arms, and his curly dark head set deep between his shoulders. His face was long too, and thin, and rather sad despite its curling laughter lines. Somehow he made Hugh think of Rahere, the King’s Jester, whom his father had told him about: Rahere who had founded Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and been the one person in England who was brave enough to tell Henry I when he ought to be ashamed of himself.
    For a while the five went on talking among themselves and passing the ale-jack from hand to hand, without noticing Hugh at all; and then, chancing to swing round, the man with the rose behind his ear saw him.
    ‘Hi! my young cockalorum! Will you know us again if you meet us?’ called the man, grinning. ‘Best pull those eyes of yours back into your head before they pop clean out!’
    The others laughed, but the Fifth Man touched his shoulder and said something in a low voice, and then called to Hugh, ‘Brother Dusty-Feet, come over here and join us.’
    Hugh said no word. He took a firmer hold on the pot of periwinkle, which was growing very heavy, and crossed the road with Argos padding at his heels, and stood looking up at the man hopefully, while they stood and looked down at him – and at Argos – and at the periwinkle.
    ‘Well,’ said the leader, in a rich and friendly voice, ‘have you never seen actors before, that you stand in gateways and stare, with your eyes growing more like gooseberries every moment, and your mouth gaping wide enough to catch a cuckoo in it?’
    ‘No, sir,’ said Hugh.
    So that was what they were: Strolling Players! – People who wandered up and down the country acting their plays in inn-yards and at the foot of market crosses. He had heard of such people, of course, but never seen them; and now he realized what a lot he had missed in not knowing them before; and he thought how splendid it would be if they were going his way and would let him travel with them.
    ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘where are you going, please?’
    ‘Anywhere – everywhere,’ said the leader, with a superb flourish of his right arm. ‘We come and go like the wind. We follow the road to the Foot of the Rainbow – but so far we have not found any gold.’
    When the leader spoke about the Foot of the Rainbow, Hugh knew that he simply
must
go with them, somehow, anyhow. They were the Fortune he had been so sure would meet him on the Oxford road, and he wanted to go with them more than anything in the world. ‘Please let me come with you,’ he begged in a desperate rush. ‘Oh,
please
!’ and waited for their answer, gazing up at the Fifth Man, while Argos wagged his tail beseechingly.
    Just for a moment there was a surprised silence. The Players looked at each other, and then at Hugh, and then at each other again.
    ‘He’s rather small,’ said Scarlet-Stockings, doubtfully.
    ‘He’ll grow,’ said the Fifth Man, ‘and we need another boy. Nicky’s getting too big to play girls’ parts much longer.’
    ‘Take what fortune sends,
I
always say,’ said the man with the peacock’s feather.
    But the man with the rose behind his ear pulled at his little pointed beard and said, ‘Not so fast, lads.’ Then he looked Hugh up and down in a considering way, and demanded, ‘What might your name be, Brother Dusty-Feet?’
    ‘Hugh Copplestone, please, master.’
    ‘Well, then, Hugh Copplestone, it is not the custom of those who travel the roads to inquire into the past history of any they may chance to meet with on their – er – peregrinations. Indeed, to do so is regarded among all true Dusty-Feet as – er – a gross breach of etiquette. But if you will pardon my saying so, you are a rather small vagabond, and you don’t look as if you had been one long. Would you by any chance be running away from your kind home and grieving parents?’
    Hugh took a deep breath